Rise to Power (discontinued)
by JoeLaTurkey
Summary: Dragon Age 2 novelisation. Watch Bradon Hawke rise from lowly refugee to Kirkwall's Champion, making friends and enemies, falling love and changing the world. MHawke/Isabela
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer: I own nothing of the Dragon Age universe  
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><p><strong>RISE TO POWER<strong>

**PROLOGUE**

"_In war, Truth is the first casualty"_

_- Aeschylus_

"_Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad."_

_- Aldous Huxley_

The once great state of Kirkwall had been torn asunder and its Champion was nowhere to be found. A multitude of restless, undying sounds filled the air; cries of anguish from the grieving and screams of agony from the dying were chief among them, great in number. Every so often these voices were stifled, breaking into coughing and spluttering, smothered by the oppressive yoke of an omnipresent ash cloud which hung unmoved over the city like divine wrath. It was thick, black as the night and inescapable. It infected all areas of Kirkwall, darkening every door; a symbol of the war that would bring Thedas to its knees; a bruise from the first stone cast. No man, woman or child was safe now, (death is so wonderfully indiscriminate, isn't it?) the horrors came to everyone, caste or clan notwithstanding. Dark and Lowtown – the lesser 'rungs' of this society were teeming with plague and vermin at the best of times. Now they were completely overrun, rendered uninhabitable by mass hysteria and overnight rioting that the atrocity had sparked. Hightown and its aristocratic residents fared no better. What good were silver and gold against a sudden tidal wave of battle and barbarism? Streets once white and decadent bore the stains of ash, burns and blood. Scores of the dead lay everywhere. Kirkwall's highest point was a smoking ruin, still vomiting ash into an otherwise clear morning sky.

As the hours passed, the peoples' cries and screams became similar and horribly coherent, fusing into two recurring mantras.  
><em>'Where is the justice?'<br>'Where is our Maker?'  
><em>Before long, a third chant came, louder and more frequent than all the others.  
><em>'Where is our Champion?' <em>

Bradon Hawke was gone, far away from the Free Marches already. He no longer heard them beg. He could no longer counsel them with wise words or defend them with his sword. He could no longer call on his friends and loved ones to provide these services in absentia. He had gone the way of Kirkwall's law, order and piety. Nothing recognisable of civilisation remained. Needless to say, such environment breed opportunism, and when unchecked, opportunism leads only to savagery. Those who weren't half-blinded by tears, clutching lifeless loved ones or braving the shattered streets looking for them while fearing the worst were looting and pillaging what was left. And just who was going to stop them? The Templars? No: their reign of terror was truly undone. Who else then? The City Guard? No: their numbers were thin and their men scattered, trying to find their own families in the carnage. Worst of all, there was no guarantee that Kirkwall would prove able to contain its internal calamity. Whispers of violent uprising spread like an epidemic. Neighbouring states in the Free Marches already felt the sting, and beyond them it seemed the whole world was right on the edge of total destruction, a single . No nation in Thedas, no matter how powerful, was safe. A weak link in the chains binding magic had been spotted, and its captives were thrashing furiously. In the nations beyond, no olive branch would be fully extended. The mages broke from the Circles, the templars from the Chantry and the Chantry from the high esteem and praises of man.

After some time the Seekers came to Kirkwall, slithering through the streets in sinister black armour, faces obscured by slit-eyed helms. Printed on each breastplate was their sigil: a black eye staring from a raging white sun; the bastard brother of Andraste's traditional flaming standard. Upon arriving in Hightown they found the sacrosanct Hawke estate undamaged by the now calmed storms of bloodshed and anarchy. There must have been _something _left inside worth investigating; as a man who inspired such respect would surely be a keeper of more than a few curious and telling treasures. Only Bradon Hawke knew for sure how this nightmare had started, and only he knew how to end it.

_Hawke: _an utterance that either brought love or hatred to the hearts of Kirkwall's surviving people. It would live on as a rallying cry or curse; an exalted name to empower rebels or a nightmare to frighten children. But to the Seekers of Truth, the name Hawke was nothing more than an irritant. They needed him now.

Hawke's grand Hightown estate had turned cold and dark as the many secrets it held. It bore all the signs of a hurried departure: doors and drawers were left wide open, revealing nothing but empty space. Books were splayed haphazardly on the floors of many rooms, none of them helpful or relevant to the Seekers' cause. Even the secret passageways were devoid of anything worth the time it took to explore them. In all the mansion's rooms, nooks, crannies and safes, not one coin could be found. Most surprising of all was the deserted armoury. Where had all the weapons gone? And what of the helms, chainmail shirts and enchanted plates as well? Hawke was a reputed collector, user and seller of such things, unconcerned with whether they came from blacksmiths or bodies. Hawke was a known harbourer of apostates and escaped slaves as well (he referred to them as one in the same, not always in jest) and it did not take many interrogative beatings of Lowtown's folk to discover the illegal chain of potions and rune crafting materials flowing in and out of his house like a river of profane lawlessness. More thorough questioning only resulted in further grievances – Hawke's flight had occurred within two days of the atrocity and he had not returned since. Only three of his former associates were seen in Kirkwall afterwards; and only one of them recently.

In addition to what was already done, the Seekers overturned every surface, smashed open every vase, splintered every floorboard, leafed through every book and found _nothing _of use. Hawke must have been travelling with plenty of coin, for he had left many items of high monetary value behind. All but one of the prized portraits were left on the walls, striking and beautiful as ever.

Other Amell family relics worth hundreds, if not thousands of sovereigns, remained in their places. The Seekers didn't need any more financial backing, they needed answers. They needed to know exactly where he was, who (if anybody) he was working for, where he was going, what he planned to do now. Hawke's twelve hundred page diary found in the master bedroom was a thrilling, if rather unreliable read. And to their fury, its entries ended on the night before the atrocity and subsequent battle.

How humiliating. The Seekers of the mighty Andrastian Chantry – preeminent spiritual authority of the civilised world, centrepiece of a celebrated empire, instrument of the Maker's Divine Will – had been beaten. Outsmarted, outmanoeuvred by this Ferelden-born thrill-seeker and his band of outlaws. He was becoming as troublesome and elusive as his famous fellow countryman, the Warden Commander; though that was an unrelated matter. They sincerely hoped it was an unrelated matter, but the evidence was piling up. This had something to do with _her. _It must have.

Hawke's arrival, rise to power and disappearance left only destruction and heretical sentiment in its wake. Destruction, heretical sentiment and worst of all: an ice cold trail. With their fruitless ransacking of his belongings over by day three, the Seekers were ready to admit total defeat and withdraw from Kirkwall to pursue the Champion and his friends elsewhere.

Then they captured Varric.

**~o~0~o~**

For the first time in almost a decade, the soft yet always menacing _clink_ of armour could be heard beneath the Hawke Estate. Light flickered feebly from the tunnels' hurriedly lit rows of torches. They illuminated only jagged, wet stone of labyrinthine walls. A shadow was then cast as the makers of that soft, menacing noise neared the end of their journey. Two Seekers marched down the passageway, each clinging to the arm of a semi-conscious dwarf. His head was covered by a black sack. Their movements were methodical and regimental but hurried, for their mission was urgent and time scarce. So scarce they weren't too bothered about the dwarf's well-being, as long as he arrived in once piece. A few minutes ago the dwarf had come to, struggling, kicking and choking against his covering before returning to his state of placid submission. He was alive and somewhat aware of what was going on. That was good: he'd need that sharp mind if he was going to prove himself useful. He'd need it to live.

Few in Kirkwall would have guessed it, but this small, sack cloth-faced figure was Varric Tethras himself. It was quite a spectacular fall from grace for such a flamboyant man. Varric had come to Kirkwall as a silverite-tongued swindler, drinker, fighter and story teller; a distinctive figure to be sure but never able to move out of his brother's shadow. That changed when he met Hawke. Years of gathering riches and siding with Kirkwall's most powerful man had made Varric the most outspoken and ostentatiously dressed dwarf outside of Orzammar. But now his head was hung low in exhausted trepidation, his thick leather finery was torn and ruffled and his expensive boots scraped against the tunnel floor.

Then the Seekers reached the corridor's end, kicking two thick doors open uncaringly. They entered total darkness with only teasing torchlight from the corridor to guide them. The doors slammed shut again, leaving them all in blackness. A third Seeker emerged from a corner, lighting up a low-hanging lamp that cast its light on a tall throne, fashioned of stone and wood and painted with entwined Amell and Hawke crest alike. Feathers of red and gold glimmered.

The Seeker removed her helmet. Cassandra Pentaghast was her name, and her mission hinged on what this lone dwarf could tell them. She was very beautiful, bearing many marks of the Nevarran royalty in her blood. She was tall and olive-skinned, slender as the knives she could wield so well. Her heavy-lidded eyes were bright and honey-coloured, her black hair cut short and kept neat, just like all other children of the affluent Pentaghast Clan. But blood and beauty weren't going to help her today. There were more effective ways of being persuasive. Cassandra hoped her mind would suffice, but wouldn't shed any tears if her well-trained fists or trusty blade needed to enter their discussion. She motioned toward the throne and the other two Seekers threw Varric into it with far more vigour than was necessary. Varric let out his first cry of pain as his ponytailed head smacked the wood. His small body and nervous posture seemed to magnify the seat further.

"I've…had gentler invitations," he grumbled, voice slightly muffled by the cloth.

Cassandra could barely contain her distaste. _Dwarves – _how she hated them. There was always an air of smug superiority about a dwarf. Surface dwellers were always deceitful, always ripping you off with shoddy, ill-gotten goods and getting back on the move before law enforcement could catch up. And then there were the 'pure' dwarves, wasting away underground in mounds of nug filth and darkspawn corpses, obsessing over their backwards caste system, deteriorating riches and blasphemous doctrines of ancestral worship. They could at least have the decency to stay in their holes where they belonged.

Varric Tethras was the _worst _kind of surface dwarf, never short of a lewd quip or handy bribe. She smelled him; detecting overstated cologne, Orzammar-brewed whiskey and more Antivan leather than many dwarves, surface or not, would be caught dead wearing. A black-armoured guard pulled off his head covering, revealing the unshaven, toad-like face beneath. Sure enough, it soon adjusted to the glare and widened into that trademark smirk.

Varric ran a gloved hand over his fleshy features. "Not one bruise," he said airily. "I think I like you already."

Cassandra said nothing. Varric looked around, smirking, and squeezed the throne's armrest beneath him. "Underground treasure den, huh?" He sounded infuriatingly conversational, as if describing the weather instead of bartering for his life, for the world's future. "You know Hawke only had the decency to show me this room once? Once! I knew the guy for nine years and he only let met into the den once."

"I am Cassandra Pentaghast, Seeker of the Chantry," she stated, moving into the light so he could get a good look at her. With one nod she dismissed the other two.

Varric made an awed, if rather patronising noise and feigned a sudden fascination with the lining of his gloves. "Seeker eh? I guess this means you _are _a real group. Looks like I owe that conspiracy nut in the Hanged Man a drink. And um…" he said, looking around at the nothingness "…just what were you seeking?"

"The Champion," she said straight away.

He shrugged and chuckled, trying and failing to sound confident. He'd seen and survived everything from the Deep Roads to Sundermount's undead, why was this woman making him feel so uneasy?

"Champion? Pretty generic term there, especially in Kirkwall. Which one are you interested in? I know a guy who won the annual Lowtown drink-a-thon four years in a ro-"

"YOU KNOW _EXACTLY _WHY I'M HERE!" she roared. A new rage seized Cassandra. In a single effortless motion she produced two items of use; her dagger and the hand-written tome produced by Hawke himself, slamming the latter into Varric's overexposed chest and sticking the former against his throat. "Time to start talking dwarf." She lowered her voice and leaned in with narrow, threatening eyes. "They tell me you're good at it."

Varric opened the diary at its prologue and lightly touched the yellowing pages as if caressing a lover. "Okay," he said with deliberate calm. "What do you want to know?"

"Everything. Start at the beginning."

Varric yelped as she twirled the blade and thrust it through all four hundred pages of 'Act One.' Its point just missed his heart. The now ruined diary fell to his knees and then the floor. He looked down at it.

Cassandra's dagger had gone right through Bethany's hand-drawing of the now ubiquitous Hawke family crest. It shone gold, black and proud on the page, uniting her drawings of all nine of them.

"If I talk, will you let me go?"

"Yes," she muttered with a grave nod. "If you prove your worth and lead us to Bradon Hawke, we may even pardon your companions. With the obvious exception of-"

"I know," said Varric sadly. "I know."

"I suggest you take this offer Varric. We'll be forgiving a _lot. _She began counting off the offences and offenders on armoured fingers. "The permissive attitude towards apostasy by a corrupt and biased Guard Captain, a Tevinter fugitive taking the law into his own hands, that wicked elven mage-"

"Who has done absolutely _nothing _wrong!" Varric snapped, pointing an accusatory finger, anger making him suddenly brave.

"Explain that to Ser Yoren," she hissed. They had come for the mage in question shortly before apprehending Varric. The results were not as pleasing. "See if that will cure the burns covering his body."

Varric held back another amused noise. "Yeah, Daisy'll do that if you make her mad enough." He frowned. "It's always the really cute ones for some reason."

Cassandra cleared her throat.

"Alright," he said as if there was any choice in the matter. He leaned back into the throne. "It began with the destruction of Lothering during the Fifth Blight, ten years ago…"

**~o~0~o~**

Lothering's already harsh, treacherous hills bore a new evil. A pack of darkspawn hurlocks were journeying up the rocky slopes, gripping serrated scimitars. They prowled like ravenous beasts, squinting in the morning sunlight and loudly sucking in air through gashes in their gaunt faces. Their prey wasn't far. It wouldn't be long before their blades knew the sweet, satisfying taste of human blood. They reached flat, even ground at last but found nobody waiting for them. Inhuman roars escaped the hurlocks and they beat their jagged grey iron armour in frustration. Where had the warrior and his pathetic family fled to?

"Looking for us?"

This voice was sultry and female. The hurlocks' hideous heads darted around, trying to find who would utter such a foolish challenge. The speaker then made her presence irrefutably known. A huge bolt of lightning streaked through the air and struck one of the creatures with an authority borrowed from the heavens themselves. The hurlock was flung into an outcropping like a boneless dwarven child and scorched beyond recognition. His kin roared again, demanding the caster show herself. Instead they met a far more dangerous foe.

Bradon Hawke leapt into view, and did not even need to draw his weapon to elicit squeaks of dread from the darkspawn. He was still young, with destiny stretched out before him like the horizon during high summer, but Bradon Hawke seemed to have already led a charmed life. He had grown up to be the desire of Lothering's every woman and envy of every man. Rock-hard muscles bulged from every inch of his body, pushing against the constraints of his rare silverite armour – which he had stumbled upon aged twelve while defending a merchant caravan from a giant spider attack using nothing but wits and a sharpened stick. He drew the greatsword from his back. The people of Lothering called it _The Empress's Point – _it was given to Hawke by an Orlesian Templar as thanks for single-handedly apprehending a blood mage on his fifteenth birthday. The sword had at least two dozen enchantments woven into it. They said it could even rival Aedan Cousland's Vigilance in direct combat. That very night, Hawke's now legendary black beard had sprouted; a gift from the Maker.

Bradon scornfully observed the cowering cretins with brilliant blue eyes. "I'm waiting," he said.

The darkspawn took the bait. Bradon overwhelmed the first in an instant, shattering its face with only two pommel blows. The second charged in, losing its foul head moments later. Hawke cut down two more as they tried to surrender. He then strutted to the last, which was still slumped on the ground from Bethany's lightning strike. Its grey, corrupted flesh was seared, letting off a deathly odour. Locking eyes with Hawke, it howled and screeched, begging for mercy, knowing it would find none. Hawke brought his weapon up then straight down and cleaved its head in two.

"Bethany!" he called. "Come, dear sister."

Bethany moved to her brother's side…

Maker's morning _breath _you should've seen his sister. She was stacked like a Knight Commander's armoury, and not afraid to show it. You know those tits that just defy gravity? They mostly belong to mages, so there must be some magic involved. Not surprising when you looked at their mother, Leandra Hawke. She must have been what…fortysomething? Pushing fifty at the most. Her hair was grey and her face rather lined, but those _tits! _Still perky and proud after all those years. It's kind of funny when you think about it; in order to develop that well in the chest area, Bethany must have had _lots _of milk from her mother. Despite this, Leandra was showing no signs of deflation or drooping.

Bethany was a virgin, but one of those virgins that you just know would be a natural between the sheets. As soon as you put it in she'd probably take control and leave you begging for more. Oh, those girls are one in a million. She really knew how to dress as well. A steel mail corset was wrapped firmly around her tiny waist, providing protection and plenty of support for those fulsome funbags. It added a kinky charm to her otherwise unspectacular civilian clothes. But then again, Bethany could look good in just about anything. There was no taming that long, luscious black hair and no battle could rob her full lips of their lustrous red shade. If Bradon was a woman, he'd look just like Bethany. They may have been the most beautiful siblings to ever grace humble Lothering…maybe even Ferelden, come to think of it. And they knew it, of course; siblings have got instincts like that. Not in a creepy, incestuous way though, don't get me wrong.

Bethany leaned over their vanquished darkspawn foes, showing more generous cleavage. "Scouts," she whispered in the voice that had turned countless men's legs to water. "We will have to fight them sooner or later."

Bradon was unconcerned. "Then we make our stand here." The battle cries of approaching darkspawn swelled by the second. Bradon turned to face the din. "Prepare yourself", he commanded.

Another crowd of darkspawn poured onto the scene. This troupe contained hurlock and genlock alike. Genlocks had always disgusted Bradon with their bat ears, endless rows of teeth and little, hunched bodies. He would take extra delight in killing them.

With fire in his eyes, a spring in his step and fury in his heart, Bradon Hawke charged into them, greatsword flashing in the morning sun. His blade came down, curving with his toned body in an immaculate arc. Magic had placed all the elements on his side and even the forces nature seemed aligned with Hawke; eager to vanquish this blighted horde.

Hawke may as well have been slicing through hot butter. Darkspawn armour, bone and flesh flew apart under his might; frozen and simultaneously seared. Torrents of their black blood turned dry ground to mud. Their dying groans were music to his ears.

"Save some for me!" Bethany cried.

"We can't keep this up forever," Bethany said as a new wave of foes hove into view.

"Tired already, dear sister?" he challenged.

She smiled and faced him. "Don't get me wrong, I'd certainly _like _to keep this up forever. I probably could if I didn't need to eat. But-"

A third darkspawn wave arrived. This they were pulling out all the stops. Hurlock and genlock alphas and emissaries had now joined their struggling brothers in this hopeless attempt to defeat the Hawkes.

"Here they come," Bethany chirped. "Shall I deal with them?"

Bradon bowed and sheathed his weapon. "All yours, dear sister."

Bethany snapped her fingers, and a great wall of flame burst into life, engulfing half the darkspawn at once. With a giggle and second snap of the fingers, she encased the other half in a spiked ice prison. Ice, fire, storms and spirits were at the tips of her fingers. _That's _how perfectly awesome Bethany was: magic came to her in all forms, in great waves of power just like _that. _Who wouldn't want to be Bethany Hawke? I bet even a werewolf could fall in love with her or something. Some people even mistook her for Andraste reborn in the world of Thedas one more time. But nobody should fall into the delusion that she was equal to or better than Bradon. She was powerful and hotter than a rage demon's nether-regions, but she was no Bradon. Not by a long shot. And how do we know? Because there was no 'fourth wave' of darkspawn; only an almighty ogre. Bethany was good, but not ogre killer good.

"Bethany, deal with the remaining foot soldiers!" he yelled.

"Yes, darling brother!" She vanquished them one-by-one with almost lazy ease.

It shook the ground with each lumbering step. Bradon gripped _The Empress's Point _to his massive chest in concentration as the purple-skinned horror came up the slope. It towered over even him, baring massive yellow fangs. Two great horns curled up from a grotesquely misshapen skull, sprouting several smaller but equally unsightly horns themselves. Wicked little eyes flashed at him, white and soulless. He just saw it as an overgrown genlock ripe for slaughter and would treat it as such. Guided by his sword's performance-enhancement enchantment, Bradon shot faster than an arrow toward the monster and in seconds was over its shoulder, leaving a massive laceration across one side of its neck. The ogre howled, more from pain and fear than anger. Half a second later Bradon was in front of it again, this time having taken off a huge chunk of its left leg. It fell to its knees, leaking gallons of tainted blood which poured over the slopes, tripping up all the darkspawn reinforcements.

"Bethany, be a sweetheart and keep it still," Bradon said as his sister finished her painless annihilation of hurlock and genlock. She trapped it in another prison, this one made from pure arcane energy. Bradon beheaded the ogre with three gargantuan strokes of _The Empress's Point_.

It seemed the rolling head of a vanquished ogre was something of an attention-grabber. All remaining darkspawn in the area smelled the ogre's blood and came for its killers. Hundreds, maybe even a thousand of them surrounded the hill and shambled up.

"There's no end to them!" Bethany exclaimed. Even Bradon silently shared her growing concern.

Then came a sound that shook the very mountains; a howl from the blackest depths of the Black City. The darkspawn fled immediately. Bradon and Bethany spun on their heels to see this phenomenon for themselves. They saw a creature which to them, had only ever existed in life's most unbelievable tales.

A high dragon was perched on the mountain's peak, wrapped in a blood-red wing but still more otherworldly and terrifying than any darkspawn. It then unfurled, and even the Hawkes recoiled. Countless spikes gleamed from its impossibly long neck. There was a disturbing _knowledge _in its eyes. Bradon braced himself for the upcoming fight. Bethany found herself unable to move, lost in those nightmarish eyes…that crown of many, many horns…hellfire breath spewing from its-

"_BULLSHIT!" _

**~o~0~o~**

"That's _not _what really happened!" Cassandra snarled. She snatched the punctured diary back. They were almost face-to-face now.

"Does that not match the story you've heard, Seeker?" Varric inquired.

Cassandra thumbed another dagger, this one (currently) hidden from view. "I'm not interested in legends. I've heard far better." Their eyes met. "And from more convincing speakers," she added.

Varric sucked in a breath. "Ma'am, you wound me!" he breathed. "But telling tall tales is my business, and business is good."

"I want the _truth!" _she said, fingers closing around her second knife.

"I was…sort of telling the truth." He shrugged. "I just added a little pizzazz to it." His face turned angry again. "And for the record, I _never _thought of little Bethany in that way! Girl was as sweet as a daisy, but…not quite as sweet as Daisy."

Cassandra cocked an eyebrow. What was this dwarf talking about?

"I'll get on to the nicknames later," Varric said. "Thought you'd recognise them from what's in the journal."

"The journal is…interesting" she drawled. "But nowhere near informative enough."

"I'm surprised you were able to read all of it so fast."

"It is a bloated, vacuous collection of poorly-written pornographic bravado," she said, throwing it back into his hands. "We only needed to skim its content to see its worthlessness."

Varric grinned. "I bet you didn't skim over any of the steamy bits," he said. "That Isabela…"

Even in the low light, Cassandra's reluctant blush was discernable. Her fury was far easier to spot.

"The _truth, _Varric. Remember why you are here. Remember why I've permitted you to keep living."

"Come on, Seeker, what makes you think I know the truth?" Varric asked amid a fit of giggles.

He'd pushed her too far. Cassandra's armour clanged violently as she stormed forward, getting the full glare of light behind her to an almost blinding effect.

"Don't lie to me!" she thundered. "You knew him even before he became the Champion! Nine years, wasn't it Varric? You need to be more careful of what you drop into idle, time-wasting banter."

"It seems my luck really is running out, huh?" he said, squinting and squirming under the glow.

"You've been a lucky dwarf so far. I advise against insulting my intelligence further."

"Seeker, Seeker," he sighed, shaking his head. At the sound of another unsheathing dagger he held both hands up. "Yes, I've known him for a long time…but why do you think that means I know where he is now?"

Cassandra gritted her teeth and turned away, hanging her head ever so slightly. "Do you have _any _idea what's at stake here?" she said, almost inaudible.

"Let me guess," Varric said. 'Guessing' was a mere formality for one as knowledgeable and gossip-wary as Varric Tethras. He recited the exact nature of the situation, relishing the truth of it. "Your precious Chantry's fallen to pieces and put the entire world on the brink of war. And now you need the _one _person who could help you put it all back together."

"The Champion was at the heart of it when it all began," she said. Desperation began to usurp anger in Cassandra. Her voice and face softened. "If you can't point me to him, tell me _everything _you know."

Varric smirked again. _"Everything?" _he inquired, thinking once more of Isabela's stories; the kind that would make Orzammar's most hedonistic polygamist blush.

Cassandra sighed. "Everything," she repeated.

Varric leaned further forward than he had dared so far. The gesture was mocking. "You aren't just worried I'll make it up as I go along?"

She held his overconfident gaze. "Will you?"

Varric relaxed, leaning back in the chair again. "Then let me tell you what really happened."

He then pulled out an Orlesian-made hipflask that had somehow gone unnoticed. "Don't be alarmed," he said when noticing the surprised look on her face. "You're not the first secret organisation I've fooled with this pocket." He unscrewed the top. "Oh, I almost forgot to ask: is it okay if I have a little drink in here? We'll be chatting for a long time Seeker."

She snatched the flask from his hand and threw it away. Varric chuckled in surprise and disbelief.

"You seriously think I'd poison myself in front of you?" he asked.

"I wouldn't put it past you, no," she said coldly.

"And void my bowels in the presence of a beautiful woman?"

"Get _talking _Varric! That charm is not going to work here!"

"Okay, okay. I always appreciate an excuse to sit back, screw my face up like an old sage and do the 'finger pyramid of recollection.' " Varric's hands and face formed the very gestures, and his tale began…

* * *

><p><strong>Well, there's the prologue. Some obvious references in here, fantasy and otherwise. This will eventually be a HawkeIsabela fic, but the romance will develop in a different way than what we saw in the game. I'll keep my Warden's background to a minimum (though it doesn't feature very heavily in the game anyway) and I'll also be adding a few more Varric exaggerations, why the hell not?**

**Just a minor detail: the darkspawn will look the same as they did in Origins. **

**As for Hawke's personality, I think it's more realistic to present a wider range of emotions and choices along with a gradual maturity (some of the best ME fics feature paragades undergoing an arc). Hawke's a human being; sometimes he takes things seriously, sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes he solves things diplomatically, sometimes he loses his temper. Here we have a twentysomething man trying to juggle protecting family and friends, accumulating wealth and influence, finding love and dealing with having the fate of a city state thrown onto his shoulders. There's no one size fits all option for these. **

**Rewritten: 15/01/12 following new details on the story from Dragon Age: Asunder  
><strong>


	2. Death and Destiny

"_I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act."_

_- G.K. Chesterton _

Varric's eyes misted over with an excited flare that had nothing to do with the room's unique lighting. Those fortunate or unfortunate enough to have heard his unique wordcraft back in Lowtown knew that only reminiscence could bring on this sparkle. The opening chapter of Hawke's saga was not a story he had personally been a witness to, but that made it so much better for him. Not because he was about to fabricate anything, but because of Hawke's fearless and rather brutal honesty about the whole affair.

Varric spoke, his voice soft yet strong. He took special care to lace every word with a touch of wonder, re-telling the tale but somehow able to do so with the impressed tone of a man watching it unfold for the first time. His oversized chair no longer 'belittled' him in any more than a physical sense; it was actually beginning to give him some authority. Cassandra saw at once why he had become so accomplished in the field of tale-spinning.

"The Blight had been unleashed on Ferelden. Darkspawn poured out of the Wilds, clashing with the army at the ruins of Ostagar," he said solemnly. "As we all know, the battle was a disaster. King Cailan died on the field with half of his men, betrayed by his most trusted general. Unopposed, the Horde marched onto Lothering. The village burned and many innocents were slaughtered. Bradon Hawke's family barely escaped in time. They soon met Aveline and Ser Wesley in a similar predicament-"

"Stop right there," Cassandra snapped. "You're being vague, Varric. I want it in more detail."

"Why so insistent, Seeker?"

"I must know his motives. Everything depends on it. The smallest thing could tell us so much."

Varric sighed and shrugged. "Sometimes a guy trying to protect his family and build a future for them is just a…guy trying to protect his family and build a future for them."

"The Champion's father was an apostate, his also sister an apostate, he spent _years_ aiding additional apostates-"

"How nice of you to save us the time of going over every instance of Hawke offering the templars aid by omitting _all _of them," Varric said cuttingly.

Cassandra continued as if he hadn't spoken. "Yet you sit here and tell me he wasn't to blame for the anti-Chantry terrorism that's torn our world apart?" Her voice was as sharp as her iridescent armour.

"Hawke's predicament was…" Varric furrowed his reddish brow, choosing his next words with greater caution than he'd cared to utilise so far…"more complicated than that," he finished at last. His eyes then widened. "Wait…you caught that?" Varric's only direct insistence of Hawke's innocence had come while his captors were obscuring his features and taking extra special care to rough him up a little.

"Yes, we have ears," Cassandra barked. "Are you having second thoughts?"

"No, I stand by my word," Varric stated. "And if you want details, fine. But don't bother complaining when the story gets lurid."

**~o~0~o~**

Leandra Amell came to Ferelden a fugitive from her own family with nothing but the clothes on her back, a few stolen coins and the man she loved. She had left behind all of Kirkwall's power, riches and comfort, but nonetheless escaped from the unhappy future confinement of an arranged marriage. And she could only ever have done this for Malcolm Hawke – a young man who had done centuries of living. A man with more class and decency than any highborn lord she'd seen, and a man who showed her beauty and excitement in things she had for so long considered beneath her.

Humble Lothering was perfectly compatible with her new worldview, and there they built a life of peaceful bliss together. Leandra never knew she would find such contentment in rural village life, but did, and before long knew for sure she would not trade it for anything. Eventually they were blessed with three children: Bradon, and two years later: the twins Carver and Bethany. All three inherited Malcolm's black hair and dark brown eyes, but only Bethany inherited his outstanding gift; his curse. Malcolm Hawke was an apostate mage, and his daughter was doomed to live the imperilled life he led. But such a damning family secret only brought them all closer, and planted into the children a maturity that usually waited years to sprout and blossom.

Bradon's early years saw him as an almost exact replica of his father, though with perhaps a little more cheek and levity; an image of what he would have been without magic. Carver proved far more cautious and thoughtful, developing both envy and a most reluctant idolisation of Bradon. As they aged, the Hawke brothers clashed many times in many ways, but for all their differences they cherished Bethany. Malcolm never once let them forget the harsh reality of his own struggle as a mage, and insisted that unless they stood by her, she'd fare the same.

Bethany went through her early life ruled by a sweet sadness; knowing her burdensome gift meant she may never find a love of her own, but refusing to let her sorrow show lest it spread, or she be thought ungrateful. In fact, she was grateful beyond words for having a father who understood and two brothers protecting her night and day – yet not a day went by without her wondering how things could have been. Many of Lothering's boys watched her with eager eyes, most desiring her friendship and some wanting more. Many times she in turn desired to forge friendships and give her heart away, only to watch Bradon and Carver's protective anger stifle such efforts. She was magically talented, and her father's training was superb. But the risk of exposing her power was always there. Watching so much rejection being carried out on her behalf hurt, but far worse were the times when she had to do it herself. She wounded smitten young men with mumbled, insincere words, saying she wasn't interested and hiding her own breaking heart with a brave smile. How terrible it was, to resent your family daily for doing the very things keeping you safe.

As much as he loved his family, and happy as he was to be living in idyllic peace after such a turbulent early life; Malcolm Hawke was still a brilliant and studious mage, and could never successfully subdue the ambitious inclinations present in all such people. It was important to never draw more attention than necessary in little, unspectacular Lothering where life's sometimes boring slowness birthed so many rumours, yet Malcolm still thirsted for greater knowledge and sharper spellcasting. He still yearned to find out and pass on the proud history of his people; still wished his Bethany's gift didn't go to waste. To him there was always another elusive tome to track down and decipher, or famed essay on the Fade to critique and annotate.

On many autumn and winter nights where cold darkness ruled, driving onlookers into their homes, Malcolm trekked down the great, faded marble of the Tevinter Highroad, stopping in a secluded glade beyond the reach or wit of any villager, blood mage or bandit. There he would freeze gently flowing streams, reduce ancient trees to ash with raging fire, call to nature's most untameable beasts to him in humbled obedience, bring forth the potent force of lightning, form rock from nothing and push the very boundaries of his own being and the Fade beyond. All schools of magic – save the forbidden art – were explored to their very depths during these nights.

When Bethany was old enough she accompanied him, though this did not come about without a great deal of opposition from Leandra, who had never taken kindly to him wandering the Highroad at night in the first place. After days of heated debate, she eventually relented, and a new light came into Bethany's life.

Her father would cause hard fruit to ripen and fall into her hands, he hid little boxes in the trees which could only be opened with the right spell. Gold sovereigns fell out of them, accompanied by the words 'Don't tell your mother.' One night he even bewitched thousands of fireflies to spell out her name. Bethany could at last see for herself the true wonders of magic's many schools and eagerly partook; though all lessons came with stern warnings about the horrors of blood magic, and to ensure she would never stray onto such a path, Malcolm told her cautionary tales of those who did. He spoke of ordinary human and elven mages who started out as untarnished and innocent as she, but upon first using blood magic became hideously grotesque mutations of their former selves. His most vivid tale was of an elven First Enchanter becoming a massive beast of 'bloated corpulence with an octupuslike head, and a face that became a mass of feelers,' that chilled her to the bone.

When he wasn't teaching magic, dazzling and gifting her with his unique trickery or warning against magical dangers, Malcolm let her know beyond all doubt that she was not alone. He thrilled his daughter with stories from his own days on the run – stories of like-minded apostates who did great things. And every night he told Bethany she was a finer talent than all of them. And thus they bonded in ways beyond the basics of the arcane arts. Malcolm taught her to hunt and fish, craft runes and brew obscure elixirs, along with ways to hide the necessary ingredients on her person from the templars.

In all this, there was never a lesson more often repeated, never a lecture more profound than the sickeningly long list of Chantry injustices and templar atrocities. Malcolm did not discourage belief in a Maker – or indeed many Makers in many forms, as life outside of Chantry dogma; among elves dwarves and even qunari, had exposed him to a wider range of worldviews than most Fereldans enjoyed – neither did he deny the nobility of magic existing to serve man and never forcibly rule over him (on more than one occasion, Leandra berated him for foul language use whenever the Tevinter Magisters came up in dinner table conversation). Nevertheless he was sure above all things that this did not excuse such authoritarian imprisonment of his people. Self-control could exist outside the Circle system, and he considered Bethany the finest example of this. Those words made her love him even more.

On their last night out together in the quiet Ferelden woods, Malcolm introduced her to the beginning of adulthood for the mage: he fashioned her staff. It was the most glorious and awe-inspiring sight of her young life, for her father's inexperience in staff-crafting did not still him for even a moment.

At the height of full moon he clove an elder tree with a lightning strike and immediately went to work on the still-glowing length of wood. He worked until sunrise. He toiled and tested, he carved and chanted, he wove lyrium in immaculate patterns, risking grievous injury.

Bethany watched from afar, safely wrapped in his cloak and warmed by a fire enchanted to resist the harshest weather. The rain fell and her father's efforts only intensified. Through torrents of it, with shaking hands and chattering teeth Malcolm continued working, refusing the fire's warmth; telling her he must do this in the moonlight, in purest nature while 'the stars were right.'

The end result was a staff even mightier than his, but Malcolm didn't stop there. The following day, before they returned home, he decorated the masterwork, crowning it with a feather from each and every native Ferelden bird, entwining it with winding lines of hawks and mabari hounds, even carving _Na damae lath'din_ into each handgrip.

Bethany's staff was a conduit of ice and fire; reflecting her own personal magical preference, the extremes of Ferelden weather and the runes encrusted at each end. But sadly its place at home was beneath the floorboards alongside his. He gave her only one afternoon to handle it in the house, and that was just for polishing. It would not be touched again until the Fifth Blight.

Upon forging his daughter's staff, Malcolm was able to at last spend more time with his sons, knowing guiltily that Leandra had been left with an uneven and unfair load in raising them. In 9:26 of the Dragon Age, he ventured out alone one night and returned the following evening with two things: a mabari pup and – unbeknownst to anyone – the wasting sickness that would end his life. He had intended to encourage the heroic ambitions present in Bradon and Carver, as they had grown as tall and robust as he. He harboured a vision of two great warriors fighting for his peoples' cause with the might Ferelden mabari at their side. But Malcolm would never see this occur. His illness was pernicious and without mercy. Malcolm spent his final days brewing a potion that could not save him but would at least prevent his infection from spreading. He died the following year when winter fell, with a smile on his prematurely-aged face after drawing nothing short of oaths from Carver and Bradon that they would protect their mother and sister no matter what.

The newly-named pup Octavius (or 'Occie' – after the first mage Commander of the Grey and Malcolm's favourite historical figure) was soon a mature, fearsome creature, and with Malcolm gone, chose the new man of the house as his master for life. It was Malcolm's hope that this final gift would keep his loved ones together. But instead, the family was driven apart. Bradon's pride at being chosen kept him away from his duties, chasing Lothering's young maidens and starting more than a few alcohol-fuelled fights in the local tavern. Without her mentor, Bethany grew restless and resentful. Without Malcolm to counsel him and soothe his hot temper, Carver grew sick of Bradon's good fortune and the efforts needed to continue hiding his sister. Devoid of any other prospects in life, both brothers joined the army when they came of age.

Ferelden, a nation marred by chill all year round, was in the final days of summer when the Fifth Blight loomed and the boys left. Lothering's far stretching fields and farmlands were always a pretty sight; they glowed gold under the sun, moved into a soft sway by the breeze. Even they could bring no comfort to Bethany and Leandra Hawke.

And when autumn fell, the leaves withered and died with the nation's spirit and king. Horrifying rumours soon had every resident hooked. One rumour unified them all: the Grey Wardens had betrayed the king, deserted the field and were still at large. Bethany and Leandra did not care for this speculation, as the truth was disconcerting enough. The bulk of their protectors were dead, the boys were missing and the Blight was left unopposed. Leandra's last memory of true happiness was their return with Teyrn Loghain's army.

But the Hawke family reunion was as fleeting as it was blissful. In the weeks that followed, aiding the influx of wounded and homeless occupied all their time. Lothering descended into chaos, strained almost to breaking point. The sudden emergence of a towering, stone-hearted qunari warrior and subsequent bloodbath tore several friends from the Hawkes. Surely their hardship had peaked at this point? Their busy lives gave no time to grieve, and they learned no details of the monster's evasion of justice and escape from Lothering.

Nobody could adequately prepare for what soon followed.

The darkspawn horde came at sunrise and showed to mercy. In mere minutes, Lothering vanished in a storm of fire and blood. They came wearing the rotting skin of Ostagar's vanquished. Family, friends and lovers of the king's soldiers witnessed the horror of seeing so many familiar faces stretched over darkspawn heads or hanging, shrunken and withered from veridium armour. Before long, verdant green and buttery autumn yellow turned black and red. The air carried all the fruits of their evil; Blight disease, fiery embers and flies fast growing fat on spilled peasant blood. Lothering's soft, gentle stream was soon choked with corpses Its buildings became a pile of smouldering black skeletons. Some welcomed death, falling on their knees before poisonous, notched blades, robbed of sanity. Some met their end fighting. There was a maddened honour in hurling oneself at the endless sea of horrors with nothing but a pitchfork or bare fists.

But some were more fortunate, able to grasp onto a semblance of sanity and courage, fleeing to the northern hills while their homes burned and their families died. Among these fortunate people were the Hawkes.

**~o~0~o~**

Leandra fell behind her children. They were running directionless through an unending stretch of rock and dry ground. She saw the future of her family in the same light: barren and hopeless. No matter their skill or experience, countless travellers disappeared into the northern wastes every year, crushed by a rock-fall, dying of thirst after days of wandering lost through unmapped paths or going mad after being forced to eat the weeds when all other food supplies ended. Some followed mirages of long-dead loved ones into ravines.

There was one advantage to braving the northern wastes and that was the lack of wildlife, dangerous or otherwise. With armed, murderous darkspawn troops chasing them, the Hawkes were robbed of this one advantage.

Exhaustion claimed Leandra and she collapsed. Dust flew up around her like a mocking spectre of death, clinging to the sheen of sweat on her face and dirtying her already patched dress. She brushed long grey hair from her eyes, hoping to see her precious children continue to safety. Leandra could hear the gleeful howls of approaching hurlock and genlock warriors, wishing it to at least be a quick death. There were few deaths more ghastly than Blight poisoning. Better she die with a severed spine or opened throat than waste away from their corruption, feral and monstrous.

But Leandra's fall came in a miraculously advantageous place. She succumbed to fatigue at a narrowing of the brown rock, where the ranks of their darkspawn chasers grew thin and vulnerable. At the narrowing's end, where the cliffs opened out to a wider space of desolate featurelessness, Bethany Hawke sprang into action with every lesson from her beloved father raging in her mind's eye. She carried two staffs: one a chipped, aged object tied to her back; the other a magnificent, vibrant weapon in her hand. She would honour them both.

Perched on a rough protrusion of stone like bird of prey, Bethany summoned her weapon of choice with a wave of the arm. Heat welled within and streaked through her outstretched hand, a pained cry of equal parts fury and effort escaped her. She had never performed this spell in such uncontrolled, dire circumstances, but the sight of her helpless mother activated instinct and grim victory was found in the form of a wall of flame bursting from the very air. It shot from one end of the trapping path to the other, crackling with eerie solidarity before intensifying, shooting outwards as if attacking prey. The pursuing darkspawn were moving far too quickly to stop. Flame seared their sickly skin, further increasing their foul stench. Their cries were high-pitched; pathetic even to Leandra's stunned ears. The darkspawn collapsed in a pile of spiked metal and burned bodies. Some made it through the wall before expiring.

As the first wave writhed and withered, Bethany jumped into the line of slaughter to grab her mother, silently signalling her hidden brothers with a nod when Leandra was safely out of the way. She could only sustain the wall for so long, for there was no wood.

A genlock made it through first; squat, dark green and bat-eared. It grinned at the seemingly defenceless women. Overlarge teeth stuck out of a mouth unable to contain them. It smelled the women, pug nose twitching with repulsive vigour. There was a depraved greed in its sunken eyes.

And then its head was rolling in the dust. Bradon Hawke emerged from the smoke left behind by Bethany's trap. His grey iron greatsword was of standard military issue, but its newest coating of darkspawn blood at least added _some_ worth.

"Carver!" he called. Genlocks were weak alone, only ever fighting in packs. Bethany's incendiary aid had been good while it lasted, but the residual cloud of smoke could have been hiding anything.

Sure enough, two more followed. Bradon brought his lengthy blade to the sky in a vicious uppercut, taking off the first one's jaw before hacking into its shoulder and getting the sword edge stuck. The second genlock approached him fast, mace held aloft. Bradon kicked the stuck (now dead) genlock off his sword and brought the blade back in an expectant parrying motion.

"THIS ONE'S MINE!"

Carver Hawke flew onto the scene from his own hiding place. He halved the mace-wielding genlock's head from above, and proudly earned a smattering of black blood on his own greatsword and tunic.

"Thanks," Bradon muttered reluctantly.

Carver's moment of smug satisfaction was over in a second, as three hurlock spearmen bounded down the pathway before he could open his mouth. Hurlocks were far taller and stronger than their genlock counterparts. The Hawke brothers beheld no true faces but gaunt grey, corpse-stiff masks with rows of teeth like yellow needles. The beasts had no noses, loudly sucking in air through rough cut slits.

Bradon went in for the kill first, clear droplets of sweat beading on his forked beard. He ducked a spearhead thrust, slicing the attacker's thigh and throwing it over his muscled shoulder. Upon rising he slashed the second one's throat in a single, fluid motion. It fell with a pathetic gurgle.

Carver engaged the third. This enemy's thrust missed the young man's side by inches, tearing a hole in his tunic. Carver's counterstroke was swift. He took off the hurlock's left arm and quickened its end with a decisive stab into the space between veridium gorget and breastplate. He then noticed the surviving hurlock splayed on the rock behind Bradon.

"Keep up big brother!" Carver sneered. He ended the beast's life with a downward stab before Bradon could. "It looks like I'm leading right now."

Again, he had spoken too soon. More enraged fiends came from the narrowing.

"We'll take these together," Bradon muttered, momentarily forgetting the competitive urges his brother inspired.

They moved in, shoulder-to-shoulder and blades forward. The Hawke brothers had inherited their father's imposing physical frame, meaning neither could fight with much finesse or refinement, but it was said that Bradon had the edge nonetheless. The fighting which followed was messy, confined to the claustrophobic walls. A tangle of blows, limbs and grunts filled the space. Putrid breath and spittle coated the brothers' faces, but they didn't back down.

"Help us Beth!" Bradon yelled as he pushed a limp genlock off him to engage another.

"I'm trying!" she retorted angrily. "It's hard to just…_use _magic openly when you've spent you're whole life being taught how to hide it!"

Bethany conjured a second ball of flame between her fingers, but her mother stifled the effort by grabbing her arm.

"No!" Leandra cried. "You might hit the boys."

The struggle continued. Bradon and Carver continued to push forward. No longer able to fully utilise weapons, the darkspawn gnashed their teeth, clawed at the human faces.

And then it was over. A heap of the dead remained. Bruises were forming on Bradon and Carver's faces. Their clothing was drenched in blood.

Carver wiped some from his face. "I think that's all of them," he said.

"For the moment," Bethany added darkly.

Leandra was still breathless. Her life was gone. None of her voice's former strength remained. "Maker save us, we've lost it all. Everything your father and I built…"

Bradon looked over his shoulder to the streak of rising black smoke that had been his home just a few hours ago.

He stepped forward and placed a hand on her shoulder. "I'm so sorry mother. I know how much Lothering meant to you but…" Bradon put on his best smile, though he could never force it to reach his eyes. "At least we're alive, that's no small feat." He looked at his siblings, urging for their support.

"Yes, you're right," his mother breathed.

"Where's Occie?" said Carver. In the madness of fight and flight, it seemed nobody had kept track of their hound.

"I told him to go ahead of us, to the Tevinter watchtower ruins," said Bradon. "Don't worry," he added at Bethany's apparent outrage. "It's a lot harder for a mabari to succumb to Blight poisoning." He scowled. "I wish we'd had more of them at Ostagar."

"Why send him away like that? We needed him!" Carver huffed.

"There are only two clear-cut paths ahead of us," said Bradon. "One further north by the watchtowers, one further west by the Wildling camps on the marshland. I told him to scout along both, he can get there faster, maybe before the darkspawn numbers are too great. We choose depending on what he can tell us."

"And if he doesn't come back?" said Carver with narrow eyes.

Bradon held his gaze without fear. "Then I'd have killed Father's last gift to us and will take full responsibility."

"We should've run sooner!" Bethany hissed. _"Why_ did we wait so long?"

"Why are you looking at us?" Carver demanded. "Bradon and I have been running since Ostagar. Your responsibilities have never gone beyond hiding at home!"

"And I suppose that's _my _fault?" she shot back, squaring up to him. He towered over her by a foot, but Bethany had never let that stop her before.

"It's _your _fault we were almost exposed at Feastday last year! Trying to impress Wendell Thorne with fiery tricks! What were you thinking?"

"Oh there you go again; deciding what I can and can't do with my private life! And what does _that_ have to do with Ostagar? I should be glad you've found something new to complain about at every opportunity."

"If you want any more lovely, long bouts of family dysfunction I suggest you make sure that family lives long enough for that to happen!" Bradon barked, stepping in between both of them as he'd done on so many occasions since their father's death. If we stand around, we'll die, and I'll be damned if this is the last argument we're ever having!"

"No more running!" Carver huffed, facing Bradon. He was eighteen, a man grown now, and sick of the cold sensation of his father and older brother's shadows. "I may have seen more than enough of these things at Ostagar, but I didn't _kill_ nearly enough!"

"What fascinating priorities you have!" Bradon hissed.

Carver drew in a determined breath, screwing up his smooth, boyish face. Since their adolescence, Bradon had teased him about everything from his inability to grow the trademark Ferelden beard to his fewer romantic conquests.

But Bradon's next words were chosen more carefully. "Look: you're a good soldier Carver," he said softly. "You can find work in the service elsewhere. And I trust Bethany. I know you do too."

"Please, listen to your brother!" Leandra urged.

Carver crossed his bulging arms, leaning back in a challenging way that everyone else had always secretly considered rather effeminate. "Then lead on brother," he drawled.

They didn't get far before the rock dipped downhill into a second, vulnerably tight fissure. A pack of well-armoured genlocks on the far side clustered into a tight shield formation and started forwards.

"Beth," said Carver, eyeing them with hatred.

Bethany stepped to the front and pointed her staff at the approaching combatants. A thin white vein of energy erupted from the tip. It struck the genlocks with a crackling sound, forming a layer of thin ice which soon flew apart. This did nothing but anger them further.

"Come on Beth, try harder!" Bradon urged.

"_Sssh!" _

She tried again. The second spell lasted long enough to form something of a cocoon, though was still not strong enough. Their enemies had been slowed, but time was running out.

Bethany flushed. "Oh just-"

She flipped the staff and fired off a huge jet of conflagration that blew back everyone's hair, almost knocking herself over.

The genlock shield barrier broke and they fled to their agonising deaths.

"Dad's preferred method anyway," she muttered with smug satisfaction. Malcolm's keen arcane pyromania and urges to use magic domestically had resulted in a few near-disasters for the Hawke family cottage before Leandra put her foot down.

Bradon's eyes were wide. "Wow…I envy your first suitor."

A pleasant surprise awaited them at the bottom, where the valley opened out further: more darkspawn; all too wrapped up in a merry round of body looting to notice the arrival of three humans.

Feeling luck sway in their favour for a change, the brothers executed a lethal surprise attack. Each strike and parry was far more desperate and adrenaline-fuelled than had been at Ostagar; as in such a hurried departure, neither had managed to seize a single reliable weapon or armour plate. Some, not all darkspawn poisoned their weapons with their own blood, meaning even one nick could lead to a painful end. It was a risk nobody wanted to take, but they had no other choice.

"Onward then," said Bradon grimly when the carnage was over.

"Mother…" said Carver, before they could continue. His voice had gone strangely quiet. He was pointing at one of the more ransacked human corpses. "Is that…"

"Brother Lewis?" said Bethany, joining his side to get a better look.

"Lews," said Leandra. There went another piece of her former life. "His name is…his name _was_ Lews."

The soiled rags that had been Lews' Chantry robe and the emptied remains of his pack were all they had to identify him. Everything else was in ruin. He was sprawled in a grotesque pose; twisted; racked by pain in his final moments. A dry, sanguineous layer caked his whole body. Shards of bone stuck out of every limb, eerily white in the morning sun. His lifeless left eye was a mass of pus and pulp. There was no right eye.

Brother Lews' departure had been preceded by days of mounting madness. As soon as he heard the news of Ostagar, he began seeing demons everywhere. He had grown thin and pale-faced, wandering through the packed streets at night, screaming himself hoarse about their impending doom. Then one morning he fled to the wastes without a word.

"Even Sister Leliana couldn't calm him," Carver muttered to his older brother as they all beheld the hideous sight. Carver enjoyed bringing up Sister Leliana, as it seemed she was one of the only women in Lothering able to elude Bradon's 'conquest chronicles.'

"I wanted him to make it so badly," Bethany whispered. "He's got a large family in Starkhaven. They would have taken care of him."

"Let's…" Leandra shook herself, and summoned the grit her husband would have expected of her. "Let's just keep going."

"Occie!" Bethany gasped.

The mabari hound came hurtling down a barren hillside; strong-limbed, chestnut brown fur rippled with muscle. Black droplets tipped his teeth. He stopped before them with a wagging tail and eager eyes.

"Which way boy? Where are their numbers thinnest?" Bradon enquired. He felt excitement welling up inside. This could be their way out.

Occie tapped a thick paw on the ground twice.

"The watchtowers!" said Bradon, resuming his run already. "The darkspawn must have burned all of them out earlier. There may be no troops left up there!"

"_Varric…" _

**~o~0~o~**

"I'd rather you didn't recite the macabre details with such glee," Cassandra said in disdain.

Varric shrugged. "It's not my fault they piled on so much death and grimness right at the beginning."

"Who's '_they?' " _Cassandra demanded, disturbed at how quickly this dwarf had relaxed and begun to enjoy himself.

"Slip of the tongue," said Varric dismissively. "And besides, we can't always get what we want. _I'd _rather be interrogated by Sister Nightingale."

Cassandra scowled at him. "She is on an errand for the Divine."

"Oh? I didn't know the Divine needed a new pair of shoes. Just a joke!" he hastily added before she could erupt again.

"She wouldn't volunteer for this job even if she could," said Cassandra. "Believe me dwarf, nobody in Thedas considers my task enviable. And Sister Nightingale does not appreciate the stories you've spun about her."

"I was only ever complimentary!" Varric protested. _"Sister Nightingale – voice sweet and beautiful as the heart she guards so determinedly, with silken hair red as the blood she spills…" _

"Get on with it."

"You can stab another book if it makes you feel better. Go ahead, I won't protest; never really was the academic type."

"Varric!"

"Alright, alright…"

**~o~0~o~**

_Maker's morning breath, the Tevinter Towers were built to last millennia. What could have done this so quickly? _Bradon thought after half an hour of swiftly following Occie's lead, all the while keeping alert for further attacks. They had gone past dozens of ancient, long abandoned watchtowers of the Tevinter Imperium, ablaze in the wake of devastation. They were heading uphill, soon to reach the highest path along the wastes, yet the surrounding rock seemed to be getting darker. Early morning sunlight added no lustre or life to it.

"Occie seems really focused," Carver observed, jogging by his brother.

"He can smell the outer Korcari marshland," said Bradon. "If the horde is advancing onto the Bannorn, there should be few remaining in the Wilds. All we have to do is steer clear of-"

"Wait!" Bethany interjected, stopping behind everyone else.

They had reached a high hillside. The view was far from scenic, revealing nothing but more harsh mountains that dotted the landscape like brown, broken giant's teeth as far as the eye could see.

The remaining Hawkes stopped and their hound stopped. "What is it, darling?" said a breathless Leandra.

"Where are we even going?" Bethany moaned.

Carver scowled at her. "Away from the darkspawn. Where else?"

"And then where? We can't just wander aimlessly once we're in the clear!"

"We can 'wonder' for a little while, as long as we're not separated. All that matters is we end up somewhere where the Blight can't reach us," Carver countered. His temper was almost non-existent these days where Bethany was concerned.

"And then what? You didn't answer my question!" she trilled. "There's a full-blown Blight out there. We may be able to survive today, but tomorrow…" She trailed off, too angry and worried to continue.

"Why don't we turn to our all-knowing leader?" Carver asked in a sour tone.

Bradon had no answers.

Leandra dropped her head thoughtfully. "We can go to Kirkwall," she said after a long moment.

Every Hawke child was taken aback by 's eyes were wide and her voice turned high. Her magic and additional responsibilities in the wake of their father's death had made her strong and competent, but for a fleeting, unnerving moment, Bradon and Carver saw little more than a frightened little girl before them.

"There's a _lot_ of Templars in Kirkwall, Mother," said Bethany, fighting to keep her trembling voice calm.

And that was only the tip of this iceberg. Kirkwall's Templar Order may have adhered to Chantry doctrine, but Chantry ethics on mage treatment seemed unimportant to them from what Bethany had heard of the infamous state. Dark rumours surrounded every Circle, but none more than Kirkwall's.

"I know that, darling," said Leandra softly. "But we still have family there, and an estate." Her face fell. "I _hope_ so at least."

The most uncomfortable silence so far descended. Leandra had never spoken very highly of their uncle Gamelin, taking care to win the hearts of her children with endless tales of how wonderful the conquest of true love was and how vacuous the traditional Amell customs were concerning just about everything.

"We have _a_ family member there mother," Carver said. "A man who never even writes to you. And no promise of sharing his estate."

"There's nothing left for us here," said Bradon. "I'd rather be denied an existing hope than flee from a dead one."

"We'll be entering the eye of the storm!" Carver retorted. "One trap to another. Don't you remember anything father told us about apostate life? Especially in somewhere like the Marches!"

"I can speak for myself," said Bethany icily. "But…I agree with Carver."

"Look," said Bradon. "There are still thousands of darkspawn nearby. We can navigate now, but come nightfall, we won't have that luxury. We should be moving with a destination in mind."

Leandra nodded. "Gwaren's the nearest settlement. If we hurry we can take ship."

Bethany grimaced, resigned to this course of action. "Fine. If that's what we're doing, let's at least be quick about it."

They set off down a drooping pathway, curving around the cliff edge.

Carver remained unconvinced. "I we survive that long. I'll just be happy to get out of here." He skipped ahead of the family with a spring in his step.

"Wait, Carver!" Bradon called. He felt a sudden flood of foreboding. The perilous road ahead still had a swathing of morning mist clinging to it. None of them could see what lay ahead with any clarity.

Octavius stopped, growling. Darkspawn noises soon joined the dog's, and Carver finally got the message.

Not a moment too soon. A black dart shot from the mist straight towards him, so close it ruffled his hair.

"_Shit!_ Crossbowmen!" roared Bradon, drawing his sword and leaping in front of his mother. "Sorry for saying 'shit' mother! Carver get back here!"

Carver complied. "What are we going to do?"

More bolts came with lethal speed, striking the rocks around, missing by inches.

Bethany pushed her way to the front. "I'll deal with this," she said. There was a determined calm in her voice.

Bradon turned to her. "Beth, are you su-"

"_Yes!_ Just give me a moment." She gripped her staff and took a deep breath.

An encasing of translucent lilac energy began to enshroud them with a pleasant _whooshing _sound. The arcane shield was an essential piece of magic for every mage, but a dreadfully difficult one nonetheless. Those unable to produce it after more than seven years training were never even allowed a Harrowing. Bethany had performed the spell only once, and only to protect herself, never a larger group.

"Ah," muttered Carver at the realisation. "Did Father manage to teach you it?" he said to his sister.

"Eventually," she said, eyes narrow with concentration. The enemy fire had stopped, leaving an unsettling quiet before them. But there was no mistaking Occie's continual growling.

Bethany's breathing intensified. She could recall the lesson clear as day. Her father had spent the entire night throwing slimy frogs at her, saying if he wanted her to stop all she had to do was block. After a few hours she finally conjured the shield, so angry she wanted to go back home and never return to their secluded spot.

The energy field thickened, pulsing with lambent power. "Okay," she whispered. "Let's move, _quickly!" _

They advanced. In mere seconds the volleys resumed. The surface of Bethany's shield rippled with every shot like water disturbed by falling pebbles.

"Not far now," she choked after two dozen paces. "We're getting close to them…"

An upcurving ledge of rock hove into view. Two genlock crossbowmen were stood on top, surprised to see their foes get so far.

"Occie! Attack" Bradon snarled.

The hound leapt forward and toppled both genlocks at once. Their throats were in shreds seconds later.

Beyond the ledge were three more crossbowmen aiming their weapons on flat ground.

"Look out!" Bethany yelled as two of them fired at Bradon. She had only a split second to conjure a shield. It flickered over him…

Both bolts hit Bradon in the stomach and he went down.

"_BRADON!" _screamed Leandra.

"_NO!"_ Carver cried. He charged alongside Occie.

Bethany felled one of the guilty darkspawn with her strongest blast of ice yet. The encasing cracked, tearing its face off.

Carver and Occie laid into the other two with barbarism in their hearts.

"It's okay! It's okay you two!" Bradon panted as a horrified Leandra tended to him, trying to find the wounds. He stood up, feeling sharp pain in his abdomen, but no mortal injuries. "They just bruised me. You did well Beth. Better than I could have asked."

As Carver, Occie and Bethany finished off their respective opponents, Bradon and Leandra looked down to the clearing where their pathway ended, seeing the day's most unexpected sight so far.

A handsome, orange-haired woman wielding a broad longsword blocked a hurlock's cut and sliced off its head in remarkable display of skill.

**~o~0~o~**

Aveline Vallen knew they would probably be dead within the hour and figured she might as well go out in style. With a sword in hand and a purpose to guide her movements, she was as fearsome as any man.

Her husband Wesley of the Templar Order was almost spent from fighting in such a large suit of armour. His short black hair was damp with blood. Sweat flowed from his pallid face over the intricate Andrastian symbol. The massive steel plates covering him were dented and cracked in areas. He could carry their weight no longer. With his final ounce of strength he thrust out his shield, caving a hurlock's face in with the mass of kite-shaped steel. With this foe vanquished he turned to the still strong Aveline beheading another.

As a templar, the detection and destruction of blood magic was Wesley Vallen's consecrated duty. If he had been dealing with the forbidden rites of humans or elves, he would have been able to sense the approaching evil and alert Aveline. But the darkspawn were a mystery; a void of enigmatic darkness in the world. It was not to be.

Behind him, a genlock assassin called on the hateful lore of demons. A gash opened in its arm and the discharge bubbled and steamed. Soon magic had rendered it completely invisible. It drew two daggers from spiked veridium armour and slashed both at Wesley's sword arm. The elbow joint was only protected by leather, and the notched blades sliced through flesh and bit into bone.

Pain exploded in Wesley's body as his sword fell away over the pathway's edge, out of sight. He cried out and fell against the cliff slopes, awaiting the final blow.

A final blow that never came. Upon opening his eyes he saw Aveline tackle the beast. The hilt of her sword was at the genlock's throat.

Aveline's green eyes were aflame. She clenched her jaw, prominent chin trembling with fury. Coppery hair hung loose from a headband. Her voice was a feral growl. "YOU WILL _NOT _HAVE HIM." She thrust the hilt down and black blood spattered over victor and vanquished alike.

Still on the hard, rocky ground, Wesley gazed into his wife's eyes and tried to voice his thanks. Only feeble wheezing came out. A strange burning sensation was spreading through his arm.

"No!" she hissed so only he could hear. "They won't. Not while I breathe."

Darkspawn numbers continued to swell around them. It seemed Aveline would indeed draw her last breath soon. She held him up with one arm and used the other to lift his shield, shrouding them both as they entered death's unknowable embrace.

It was here they met the Hawkes: Bradon and Carver charging in with grey iron blades in dire need of whetting, Occie crushing genlock bones with filed teeth, Bethany firing volleys of elemental magic and Leandra watching with a mixture of fear and pride.

The last darkspawn soon fell. Using thin but sturdy leather straps, Aveline quickly tied her longsword and Wesley's shield to her back, kneeling at her husband's side. "Stop squirming Wesley," she urged. "You'll make it worse."

None knew it yet, but the Taint was in Wesley's blood. His spasms were involuntary. There was nothing that could be done. She may as well have told him to cease loving her.

"Apostate! Keep your distance!" he snapped, eyes on Bethany's staves. In carrying out his Maker's Will in what were surely the last moments of his life, Ser Wesley found one final surge of power and purpose. He rose to his feet and limped toward her on trembling legs.

Bradon and Carver's reaction was automatic, written on their very hearts. They stepped in front of Bethany shoulder-to-shoulder and raised their weapons. Occie bared his teeth and growled. Bethany groaned.

Bethany's voice was colder than the approaching winter. "Well, the Maker has a sense of humour," she spat. "Darkspawn and now a templar. I thought they all abandoned Lothering. Why stay somewhere with nobody to persecute or subjugate?"

"My husband and I never reached Lothering," said the redheaded Aveline, stepping to the knight's side to support him once more.

Wesley's eyes were still on Bethany. "The 'spawn are clear in their intent, but a mage is always unknown. The Order dictates…"

Bradon and Carver's grips tightened. Their eyes narrowed. Wesley could barely summon enough energy to get his words out, but considering what they'd just been through, neither brother cared to take any risks.

Aveline's head fell. "Wesley," she sighed.

"You will _not _take my daughter!" said Leandra, joining her sons.

Wesley's shook his head in defiance. His whole body shuddered from the strange heat. He was running out of time and would not go to the grave with an unfinished sanctified task before him.

"That woman is an apostate." His voice was a breathless rasp. "The…Order…dicta-"

"Did he just call me a 'woman?' " said Bethany. "There's a first." She faced her overbearing brothers. "I told you I'm not a child in need of your protection anymore!"

Bradon made the first move, thrusting his sword into the dirt with alarming strength and squaring up to Wesley. If this stubborn templar didn't get the hint he'd soon receive clarification in a far less subtle manner.

Aveline pulled her husband back before the situation spiralled into a madness that would leave all of them dead and rotting at the arse end of Ferelden. "Dear they _saved _us. The Maker understands."

_They saved__** you, **_Wesley thought. But that was more than enough. He relented, offering the black-haired young warriors a subtle bow.

Aveline breathed a sigh of relief. "I am Aveline Vallen. This is my husband, Ser Wesley. We can hate each other when we're safe from the horde."

Bradon held up a calloused hand. "This is an unusual time and place to be hunting apostates, Ser. I thought your Order departed for the Bannorn with the remaining Chantry priests," he said. "And all the food any money," he added in an undertone.

Wesley wiped sweat from his face with his good arm. "I was en route to Denerim on business for the Order, but simply _had_ to turn south when I heard of Ostagar."

Bethany's eyebrows flew up. _"Now _who's disobeying the Maker's laws?"

Aveline chose to ignore this. A smile flickered over her otherwise impervious face. "Bad luck – and _judgement_ – brought us together here before the attack," she said.

"My first priority is Aveline's safety," Wesley panted.

"The nice templar has been convinced to postpone his Divinely-given hunt for illegal mages," Bethany chirped in the voice she had reserved for Chantry sisters all through childhood, though the attempt at innocence was lacking here. "So let's not dwell upon it, shall we."

"Wise girl," Aveline murmured.

"You're awfully quick to offer your allegiance," said Bradon.

"So is any man with a large enough wound and…dear enough wife to protect," Wesley countered. Aveline touched his arm.

"Another blade between us and the darkspawn? I'll take it," Carver said.

"So long as the horde is their first concern," Bethany added.

Wesley gave a reluctant nod. "My duty as a templar is clear but that…is for another day. If we are granted that opportunity."

Bradon pulled his sword back from the ground. "If I help grant you it, why don't you forget that 'other day' completely?" he said in a dangerously low voice

"_Yes!_" Aveline insisted. "You have our word."

"For a while it looked like we were the only ones that escaped the darkspawn," Leandra said, hoping to establish at least _some_ common ground.

"We haven't really escaped anything yet," said Bradon. "Ostagar was the King's chance to nip it in the bud. He failed. We all failed."

Aveline's eyes widened. "You were there?" she said, surprised. She examined both brothers and nodded after a few moments. "Yes! I see it now. Third company, under Captain Varel? I was stationed with Ser Cauthrien and the Teyrn." Her eyes darkened at the final word.

Bradon nodded. "Yes. We fought for the first half hour or so, but Varel had to split our battalion in two when the Tower of Ishal's signal was delayed. Our half re-joined the Teyrn's men in the feint of a retreat. The others stayed with King Cailan and Warden Commander Duncan in the lower courtyard. Eventually we were all taken off the field."

"The plan was to temporarily imbue the darkspawn with confidence and then crush them with a surplus of reinforcements," said Carver, looking to Aveline. "But according to the Teyrn, their numbers were too great. By the time their ogres arrived we had to retreat."

Aveline pined for the days when she could think as impressionably as these younger men were doing right now. "Actually…" she began. The words were crushing, relentless like a blacksmith's hammer. But these people deserved the truth as much as she.

"Actually, we fell to betrayal, not just the darkspawn. This arm of the horde will not have the same advantage."

"_What?" _said Leandra.

"Betrayal?" Carver snorted. "What are you talking about?"

"It's very a long story, we'll discuss it later," said Aveline urgently.

Bradon nodded and looked to Wesley. "How bad is that wound?" His head was swimming with shock at Aveline's news. The Hawkes had been too busy aiding refugees to fully engage with Lothering's local politics, and had shrugged off rumours of Grey Warden treason…but Aveline had mentioned betrayal…he shook his head. That was for another time.

"I think my sword arm's a loss, even with healing," said Wesley. He held it out.

The laceration looked days old already. Red flesh was greying and acrid-smelling. Wesley's veins looked like cracked, bloodless wires.

"Then you'll have mine, Wesley. As always," said Aveline. She fixed her gaze back on the Hawkes. "For now, we move with you. The northern path to Gwaren is cut off, the main body of the horde gathers there. We barely escaped with our lives."

"Well we can't go west!" Bethany protested, remembering Occie's warning.

Leandra's face fell into her hands and she broke down. Bethany embraced her.

"Then we're trapped!" Carver exclaimed. "South will take us straight into the Korcari wilderness, that's no way out! And it's never wise to spend more than a day out in these wastes."

"If the options are south or die, I'll take my chances with south," said Bethany over her mother's shoulder. "We need to move, I'd rather not be a sitting target!"

"Sitting around, waiting for the templars in Lothering for the last several years seemed preferable enough," Carver said under his breath. Bradon stepped between the twins before more squabbling could hinder their progress and endanger them all further. Bethany bit back her response at the sight of her oldest brother's facial expression.

Faraway fingers of smoke from Lothering still stroked the skies. Leandra took one last look at everything. At nothing.

"Then we'll go south," said Aveline. She addressed Leandra. "Your children fight well, mistress…?"

"Hawke," said Leandra. "Leandra Hawke. These are Bradon, Carver and Bethany." Each child nodded in affirmation of their names.

"Thank you for the aid," said Aveline. "I fear Wesley and I may not have survived another minute without you."

"How could the darkspawn get this far so quickly?" Wesley muttered, weak and weaponless.

"You take point, I'll guard the rear," Aveline said briskly, ignoring Wesley's question and looking at Bradon. "And keep sharp!"

Bradon heard an unmistakeable militarism in her tone, and knew straight away how she had got so far alone.

They set off in a tightly-knit group at a quick pace, going around another mountainside. Leandra and Wesley were in the centre. Carver guarded the left. Bethany was on the far right, prepared to produce another arcane shield if she needed to.

Carver stepped forward and nudged Bradon. "I'll keep watch if you need to stop for a moment." Carver's face and tone were unusually soft.

"Thanks," said Bradon. "But this Aveline looks like she could hold just about anything off. I've never seen anything quite like it."

And so they proceeded for another two hours, over hills and under arches in the rock, through mountainous fissures and crags until they finally seemed near low ground. Every so often they would come across a hurlock straggler, but the darkspawn numbers seemed suspiciously few. Bradon wondered why Occie had warned against proceeding anywhere but north.

When they reached low ground, more darkspawn attacked, this time from both all sides and in greater numbers. True to her word, Aveline braced at the rear while Bethany focused her maligned talent on keeping the frontal attackers at bay with torrents of fire.

When the visceral fray was over, Carver took his first deep breath. Bradon felt a pronounced heaviness in his sword and a sore fatigue in his muscles. He wondered how much more running and fighting he was capable of. Hunger and thirst had gripped everyone. Wesley was growing paler by the minute.

"Quick, before they regroup!" Aveline warned, somehow still energised. "We must press towards the Wilds."

Then they reached a most curious area. Laid out before a wide cliff slope was a clearing of smooth, dusty ground circled by an almost perfectly symmetrical pattern of stones. Sharp wooden stakes bearing human skulls were stuck into the ground, forming an inner circle.

Bethany shook. Her teeth began to chatter, though nothing in the weather was causing it. "The Fade is thin here," she whispered. "Something's not quite-"

"Look!" hissed Carver, pointing at a pool of blood from a slain genlock. It was sloshing and welling about, moving in disturbed, restless ripples.

The ground beneath trembled. The pool rippled again. A great, thudding noise began to pulse from afar, increasing by the second. Occie did not growl this time, but whimper and cower.

"Blood magic," whispered the now chalk-skinned Wesley. "The thin Fade…don't the darkspawn use blood magic to control-"

"Yes," said Bradon. "I think we're about to discover what's been destroying all these towers."

A great shadow covered them all. It took an overlong moment to realise this shadow was being cast by a fifteen foot monstrosity descending on all of them from a plateau high above. Aveline tackled Wesley to one side, Occie did the same to a surprised Carver.

Bradon, Leandra and Bethany somehow all found themselves outside the circle in an instant.

The ogre landed, quaking the ground with its dozen-ton carriage of armoured purple flesh. It was crowned with two huge horns that curled off its head like diseased growths. Its eyes were white suns, impossible to behold. Spittle expelled by its great roar flew between overabundant yellow fangs and drenched Wesley and Aveline.

But the ogre was stilled for a moment, taken aback by such a range of scattered prey. Wesley's stinking wounds marked him for death first, and the ogre complied. It reached for the felled templar with idle confidence.

Aveline dived over her husband with an outthrust sword in hand. The tip tore their would-be killer's hand between finger and thumb and it drew back, howling from a mix of pain, fury and frustration.

Carver saw a flash of opportunity in the ogre's recoiling and let rage overtake him. He tore his leg from Occie's restraining jaws and ran at the creature.

"YOU SOULLESS BASTARDS!" he cried, entering the most dangerous duel of his young life.

Carver threw all his strength into an ambitious overhead cut, only to hit the ogre's vambrace. The pathetic _clink _of blunting blade on armour was the last sound he ever heard.

A clawed, amethyst hand seized his head with crushing intensity. Carver never saw the faces of his companions, never heard their screams. He hit the nearest outcropping with mortal speed. His spine came apart like an autumn leaf. His mouth sagged open, and streams of blood flowed out.

"CARVER!"

Forgetting all tiredness, Leandra dived over the rows of rock and sprinted to her son's side. All that mattered was his health. Even Carver's killer didn't exist to her in that moment. Nothing else existed.

"Mother _no!" _Bradon yelled.

Before the beast could strike Leandra, Aveline was on its back. She plunged her sword into its right shoulder, getting at least eleven inches of the blade in behind the collarbone.

Following this, Bradon ran between the ogre's legs and sliced the right inner thigh with all his might. Seconds later, Occie's teeth were sunk into the clawed hand that had seized Carver. The ogre's great limbs flailed from many pains in many places, but Aveline and Occie still clung to it.

Bradon tried to cut the second thigh. Midway through the action he met a wild strike from the ogre's free hand. His sword shattered and he was thrown back violently.

With Bradon out of the way, the ogre was finally able to grasp Aveline and Occie. Their end was seconds away…

Until a rage-driven magic spat from Bethany's staff. Flame brushed the ogre's wicked eyes, reducing its lids to curls of baked flesh that hid the ground with a hard thud along with Occie and Aveline. The young mage became the huge darkspawn's new focus and it charged at her with its head bent forward like a bull ready to gore its prey. She greeted it with a second spouting of fire, rolling out of its way a split-second later.

Bradon, Aveline and Occie struggled to get up as the ground shook again from the force of their foe smashing through the outer circle of stone and colliding with the cliff. Bradon rushed to Carver's side and took up his little brother's sword. Aveline's weapon was still in the ogre's shoulder. She untied the shield from her back and held it aloft, bracing herself. Bradon crouched by her side in a similarly readied pose.

"Wesley, get out of here!" Aveline shouted as the unarmed templar began limping towards her.

"Occie, get back here!" Bradon yelled as the dog ran off out of sight.

The ogre turned to them with both horns splintered. Wesley, Bethany and Leandra crouched behind Bradon and Aveline.

"Any ideas?" Bradon muttered to the group.

"One," said Bethany. "Just stay still. Trust me."

The ogre brandished what was left of its still lethal horns and charged again. Bradon and Leandra felt a shiver in the air they could already associate with the arcane shield.

The shield had been cast before the ogre's lacerated right leg. While not this was not a strong enough barrier to completely stop the darkspawn, it was enough to stifle the injured leg and trip the beast mid-run.

Bradon leapt forward and thrust Carver's sword into the ogre's detestable, unprotected eye as Occie re-emerged with Wesley's sword in his teeth. The beast writhed and cried out, but Bradon only pushed in further.

Aveline gladly accepted Wesley's sword and fully blinded the ogre as Bradon withdrew Carver's.

"Stand back!" he yelled.

She pulled back a few feet as Bradon spun on his heel, bringing the sword around in a murderous sweep. He slashed the darkspawn's thick throat open, breaching a floodgate of black blood over them both.

The ogre gurgled and went still with a final, hateful snarl.

"Well..." said Aveline after a moment of stunned silence. "That was-"

She was on her back with the wind knocked out of her and pain coursing through her limbs. The ogre was somehow still alive and high above, staggering about with an open throat like the walking dead.

"Oh no you _DON'T!" _

She opened her eyes and saw Carver Hawke's sword in the ogre's side, beneath the ribs. Bradon howled from the effort, pushing the wounded darkspawn back with its hilt.

_"You've...killed...enough!" _he spat through gritted teeth.

He tore the sword out and the ogre stumbled back, landing spread-eagled on the sharp wooden stakes which dug into its back, ending its life at last.

The killing of a darkspawn ogre was the ultimatum of skill and courage to countless Thedosian warriors. It still is. Yet no spark of triumph could uplift the victors' hearts.

"It's a Blight to be sure," Aveline gasped. "A 'darkspawn raid?'…the Teyrn…he _must_ know it deep down."

Bradon tore his eyes off the dead miscreation. "What do you mean?"

Aveline only shook her head. "Again; that can wait. I'll explain when we take ship. Wesley needs to get to a healer quick."

Behind them, a mad-eyed Leandra continued trying to wake her son. "Carver wake up! The battle's over we're fine!" She was almost hoarse.

"I'm sorry mistress. Your son is gone," said Aveline, throwing solemnity into her tired voice.

"No…I promised their father…I left everything else in life behind to be with him. I promised I'd at least keep the children safe."

She shook him again and again and again. Carver's darkened eyes saw nothing. His severed spinal cord began to creak and squelch. He flapped like a string-less puppet; humiliated even in death. Blood was still flowing from his open mouth.

"Carver…" she sobbed. _"Carver!" _

Occie whimpered and nudged the younger Hawke brother to no effect.

Bradon said nothing. His own grief raged inside – beyond tears or words. He needed to say something, _anything._

"He's…" Bradon's throat was dry. His spirit was crushed. "He's a hero mother."

"I don't want a hero! I want my _son!"_ She turned from Carver's body to him, eyes shining with enraged tears. "How could you let him charge off like that? Your little brother! My little boy!"

Bradon would face countless horrors in the years to come. He would know the agony of many wounds, but nothing would ever cut deeper than those words. No cry of the living or dead would haunt his dreams more than Leandra Hawke's. No failure would belittle him more.

"Mother please…" Bethany was a child again, with a runny nose and tear-stroked face. "We can't stop now."

"I didn't want to lose a son!" Leandra shrieked.

"Then don't make it worthless!" Bethany retorted, far too stricken to consider the tact of her own words.

"Allow me to commend your son's soul to the Maker, Mistress." Wesley looked and sounded almost as close to the afterlife as Carver. He raised his rotting arm, bowed his head and uttered: "Ashes we were, and ashes we become. Maker, give this young hero a place at your side. Let us take comfort in the memories shared, and the peace we know he finds in eternity."

The others murmured the expected response, but found nothing of comfort in the prayer.

"I'll never forget you Carver," Leandra whispered, kissing her son's forehead for the final time.

She sobbed again. The sound was ghastly to Bradon, more harrowing than any darkspawn shriek. He vowed to do everything within his power to prevent it in all future endeavours. No parent deserved to be subjected to this.

Bradon took her left arm, Bethany gently grasped her right. Their mother's breath came in shudders, she couldn't move unaided.

"He's father's problem now," said Bradon. "And vice versa."

Bethany and Leandra made noises halfway between sobs and laughs.

"And we'll come back to bury him one day. I promise."

The passage of time was lost to them on their next trek. Eventually, after what may have been hours, the group reached a more open space; a crossroads between many mountains, before more smouldering ruins of the last Tevinter watchtowers.

"Flames, we're too late!" Aveline snapped when a fresh company of detestable foes arrived, scuttling out of every pore in the ruin like disturbed spiders.

"There's no end to them," Bethany moaned.

**~o~0~o~**

Until just over three decades ago, they had been considered extinct; hell-spawned relics confined solely to history pages chronicling a darker time, and present only in the dreams of children and fancies of madmen. But their re-emergence marked out an age for them in the calendar.

A high dragon was perched on the uppermost gnarled peak. Even on a mountain, beyond the average mortal's reach it exuded age greater than stone, size beyond the combative efforts of the finite and cruelty beyond any hurlock. Its colour was that of blood where only the killing cut could reach – a deep crimson, a red given off by crawling lava, a red that maddened watchers of the skies when wrapped around a comet trailing through the heavens. A gargantuan wing obscured its most evil features, but only for a saving moment.

The dragon unfurled, stretching out into its full form and revealing a many-horned head mounted on a neck as spiked as it was long. It was a colossal, scaly being made all the more nightmarish against the backdrop of sun and infinite sky. Every inch was sinewy and sharp-tipped yet without a discernible weak point.

The dragon roared, and filled the world with a sound billowing from the most cursed reaches of the Black City that carried itself over each peak and through each valley of the wastes; the unified cry of all tormented souls. The ground quivered as if afraid. The Fade thinned further, and something malevolent and immaterial that did not belong in the world of love and life seemed to enter it.

Leandra drew in and gasped out shuddering breaths, Aveline's sword tumbled from her limp hand, Wesley's legs failed him and the Hawke siblings froze in an embrace. All of them looked upon a beast of titanic proportions seemingly able to manipulate the seismic sway of the very foundations of the earth with little more than its carrion roar. Despite their reputation as the Maker's manifested wrath, the darkspawn shivered and tried to flee. Their own cries were more enfeebled than ever against the dragon's.

The dragon dived, rending the air with its huge form and inflamed outpouring of breath. A dozen rows of darkspawn were immolated beyond anything Bethany could have conjured. The rest would meet far more gruesome ends.

It may as well have had half a hundred appendages, for in the full fury of its attack, nobody could tell. Limbs longer and thicker than every Ferelden tree became blurs whipping like the wind. An uncontrolled savagery entered its eyes; yellow eyes swimming with knowledge and power. There may have been no method to its gleeful, violent madness, but that just made it all the more frightening. No matter how much or how little control the dragon had over its actions, there was still a demonic malignancy woven into every one. It cracked bone as if breaking a spider's web, bypassed armour as if poking through wet paper. The mightiest hurlock stood no chance.

When the slaughter was over and the ground blanketed by blood, light – white and gold – erupted all around the dragon in a swirling cage. All watching averted their already tired eyes with grunts of pain. This was beyond gazing into the sun.

And then it faded. A peculiar sight remained.

Standing with light washing over the body like liquid gold was not the high beast in shrunken form, but a woman. The light vanished, and the fighters saw an old woman with smooth white hair and a heart-shaped face that hinted at remarkable former beauty in years passed. She wore garments unseen in any part of the modern world: a studded gorget and jerkin of unknown material that appeared halfway between dragon skin and leather. It had the dragon's colour. Her bone-white hair was pulled back; coiled and sharpened by an iron headdress into an almost perfect imitation of a high dragon's crown. Black feathers too large to have belonged to any raven were clustered over the woman's thin shoulders. Needless iron armour covered her arms and legs.

They may have been the vestments of the Chasind in a time long since lost. A time soon to return.

And then the Hawkes and Vallens noticed her eyes. She had the dragon's eyes: yellow and _knowing;_ seeing every secret of their hearts. A cape, also sharing the colour of the dragon's coat, flowed behind her in the wind, never catching fire for all the residual flames it touched.

Bradon and Bethany stepped forward to greet her while the others tended to Wesley who was now slumped against an outcropping.

"Well, well…what have we here?" she said. Her voice was one of many sounds and suggestions. It was a gentle rasp: the sigh of a venomous snake embracing mesmerised pray. It seemed to promise things that were not known, as if it were a bastardisation of the Siren Song. But the embrace of love was not promised here. Instead she voiced the enticing promise of power, of gnostic enrichment.

She silently approached them. "It used to be we never got visitors to the Wilds, but now it seems they arrive in hordes!"

A fear unlike anything Bradon had ever felt claimed him. It was subtle and confused. He had no idea what to make of this. This…woman had saved all of them, but for what? And she seemed a woman of such curious opposites – a voice both worn by age and devoid of weakness – shapeshifting magic both archaic and refreshingly alive.

He stiffened and tried to throw some authority into his voice.

"I don't know what you are, but-"

"But what?" she challenged, clearly amused. "How foolish to enter a fight so unprepared! You don't even know _what it is _you face." She sighed. "Foolish boy, you'll learn. You know so much less about my motivations, my goals."

More silence. Bradon sheathed Carver's sword onto his back. The witch took it for permission to continue. "If you wish to flee the darkspawn, you should know you are heading in the wrong direction."

She turned away and examined the unforgiving deserts and highlands as if beholding a great painting.

To Bethany, this woman seemed to be no more than an extremely powerful apostate. "Wait! You can't just leave use here!" the young mage cried.

The woman turned very slowly. "Can I not?" she let out a dry, almost inhuman laugh. "Of course I can't…for I came across a most peculiar sight." She moved closer to Bradon and threw up armoured arms. "A mighty ogre, vanquished! Who could perform such a feat?"

"All of us," said Bradon tersely.

"Oh, humble heroes do bore me so," said the witch. "I've met far too many. It never ends well for them. But now my curiosity is sated, and you are safe for the moment. Is that not enough?"

Bradon's confusion returned; equal parts gratitude and terror. The witch spoke for him.

"They are everywhere or soon will be, well…" she chuckled to herself, "that's for _those _boys to decide." She looked up at him. "Where is it you plan to run to, hmmm?"

Bradon could not shake the feeling this woman knew already.

Bethany's credulity remained. "We need to get to Kirkwall – in the Free Marches?" she inquired.

"Kirkwall?" the crone laughed with fire in those esoteric eyes. "My, my; that is _quite_ the voyage you plan. Your king will not miss you, hmm?"

"King Cailan was betrayed," said Bradon, not wanting to know how she had figured out their profession. "There's nothing left for any of us here but more death."

She turned away again, beholding the cruel Wilds. "If you only knew," she whispered. "I see…hurtled into the chaos you fight…and the world will shake before you."

Bradon's hand returned to the hilt of Carver's sword.

"Is it fate or chance? I can never decide," the witch muttered to herself. She then straightened and turned. "It appears fortune smiles on us both today. I may be able to help you yet."

"I'd like to know who and what you are first," Bradon said coldly.

"I know what she is," said Aveline, rising from her beloved's side. _"The Witch of the Wilds._ Witches that steal children. I thought it was a Chasind legend until just now._" _

The accused cackled, showing her extreme age as her face creased. "As if I had nothing better to do!"

Bethany joined Bradon's side. "So you…_are_ just another apostate?"

The witch smiled. "Yes my dear. Just like you."

The accused merely shrugged and smiled. "As for the Chasind legend…yes; some call me that. Also Flemeth. Asha'bellanar. An old hag who talks too much. Does it really matter? I offer you this: I will get your group past the horde in exchange for a simple delivery to a place not far out of your way. Would you do this for a 'Witch of the Wilds?' boy?"

Bradon frowned at her. "Forgive me…but…you would go through all that trouble to have something delivered?"

"NO!" Wesley choked.

"You might call it; an 'appointment' to keep," said the witch. "It is far more convenient to all parties involved for us to do it this way. How nice to know that you're not without your own needs."

"How much trouble will this delivery be exactly?"

"About as much trouble as my saving you not five minutes ago."

"If that's true," said Bradon carefully, not wanting to anger such a being with ingratitude, "then why not do this yourself the conventional way?"

"Are you saying you _don't_ want to bargain?"

Wesley groaned and cried out again. "Don't do it!"

"I'm saying I'm sure you can handle yourself," said Bradon.

"Thank you, but do not fall into that trap. My prowess has been rather exaggerated. Your friendly templar associate sounds like he's facing Urthemiel himself."

_Urthemiel would frighten me less, _thought Bradon. _I know what he is and where he came from._

"What do the rest of you think?" Bradon asked, though his eyes never left the supernatural wonder before him.

"Wesley's dying. We need to leave _now," _said Aveline as her husband began to writhe beyond her and Leandra's efforts to restrain him.

"If you need to, leave me behind," he choked. Black foam continued stifling his breath. "But _don't _make a deal!"

"NO!" Aveline repeated. "I said I'd drag you out if I had to. I'm not done dragging yet. Even if it means making a deal with this…" she trailed off.

"It's all we can do Bradon." said Bethany.

A thousand doubts and questions fought one another for the spotlight in Bradon's head. But then he remembered making that silent vow, and nodded. "We have no choice."

Flemeth nodded. "We never do. There is a clan of Dalish elves just outside the city of Kirkwall."

She placed an iron bas-relief of a high dragon into his hand. It was colourless and ancient-looking. Its grubby chain had been twisted and bent in several areas.

"Deliver this amulet to their Keeper, Marethari," said Flemeth. "Do as she asks of you and any debt between us is paid in full. But before I take any of you anywhere, there is another matter."

Bradon turned around to the heap of bloody steel, leather and flesh that was Wesley. The templar was terrible to behold. Black foam frothed between his white lips. A mesh of dark veins began appearing as the infection neared its peak.

Wesley let out a strangled scream. In a split second, Aveline was on her feet again, sword drawn. "No! Don't touch him!" she warned.

Flemeth showed no fear. "What has been done to your man already poisons his very blood."

"You lie!" Aveline shouted.

"She's right Aveline…" Wesley's voice cracked feebly as his life slithered away. The burning sensation was everywhere. "I can feel it, the corruption. It is a terrible thing to be a prisoner, trapped in your own body. I'd rather…be free of it."

"Do something!" Bethany pleaded, looking hopefully, pleadingly into Flemeth's unreadable yellow eyes.

Flemeth shook her head. "There is but one cure: to become a Grey Warden."

"And they all died at Ostagar," said Hawke, reminding himself of the grim truth just as much as everyone else."

"Not all," Flemeth said. "But the last are now beyond your reach."

"Aveline," Wesley begged. _"Please." _

"You can't ask this of me!" Aveline had only vague memories of tears. "I won't!"

"_Please," _he whimpered. _"It's so slow…it hurts so much. I'd do it myself. But I just can't."_

Bradon knelt beside both of them and felt his mother's hand squeeze his shoulder.

"He's your husband Aveline. Only you can decide his fate," said Leandra. Her voice was soft as silk. It carried a terrible, intimate familiarity with such things.

Insistence bordering on anger entered Wesley's now hideous face. "Aveline, I'm fading. Not just my body, my _being._I will not have my final moments marred my forgetting all memories of you…I want my end to come while still able to recognise your beautiful face…_please!" _

She drew the dagger from its scabbard on his side.

"Be strong my love. You've never failed before."

She raised it.

"Remember the way we were, not how it ended."

She unfastened and eventually opened his armour. Her hands shook. Tears streamed unopposed.

"Goodbye Aveline. I love you."

Aveline brought the knife down, and pierced the heart that had been hers for so many years.

The most horrifying silence yet surfaced. Leandra, still in shock at Carver's demise, watched with hollow eyes.

"Without and end, there can be no peace," Flemeth rasped.

But in Aveline, there was only numbness. All four stranded companions stood wordless, enveloped by unrealised grief, sickened by their guilt, _hating_ themselves for outliving people they had loved so much.

Flemeth led them forward. "It gets no easier. Your trials began today. Not even I can say for sure where or how they will end." Her cloak fluttered in ever-growing wind, flowing around her with the authority of a high dragon's wing.

**~o~0~o~**

"_Flemeth?" _Cassandra barked, not wanting to believe it.

Varric at last broke his finger pyramid. "I thought that might interest you. Thanks for confirming my thoughts by not interrupting straight away."

Varric's words struck her deep, but it did not show. "You expect me to believe a myth swooped out of the Wilds to save the Champion?" she said.

Varric met her eyes with grim determination. "And once again _you_ seem to be forgetting just how much I know. I spoke to Sister Nightingale, Seeker. I know about the Warden. I know _he _owes Flemeth his own life." He gave her a simpering grin. "I'm not sure your dagger-toting colleague would appreciate Flemeth being written off as legend." His sweet grin turned sour. "Damn, you should have heard her go on about how amazing it was to watch him 'slay' her. _'Ooo 'e was so courageous! Zere was only a leetle chance of success but 'e triumphed like a true 'ero!' " _

This unnerved Cassandra more than anything previously said. She had had him brought in assuming he would treat her to the occasional impudent remark but eventually give in to fear and recite a straight story. She was not prepared to hear him offer insights into the Andrastian Seekers like this.

"Very well," Cassandra said upon regaining composure. "I suppose I should not be surprised to hear of her involvement."

"Yeah, I liked my version better too," said Varric with a small laugh. "I hear in the Warden's version, she not only talked like and old hag, she _dressed_ like an old hag and turns into a _purple_ dragon. Can you believe that?"

"What else aren't you telling me, then? What of this amulet she gave him?"

"In time, Seeker, in time. There's a lot of ground to cover before we get to that."

She gave him a reluctant gesture of approval. "Continue. But don't tell me they all flew to Kirkwall on a dragon!"

"Let me assure you Seeker: nothing so fanciful. Yet."

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><p><strong>Man, what a gruelling chapter. It felt strange adding humorous bits. <strong>

**I decided to give the genlock assassins blood magic powers to explain their ability to achieve invisibility.**

**Let's face it: Dragon Age's 2 is still an extremely controversial game. With this novelisation I hope to develop a seamless flow between side missions and main missions, and will include some chapters covering the events between each act. But I'm not claiming any kind of writing superiority.**

**There will also be no character-bashing, and no unfair treatment of a character's respective fanbase. **

**There are countless mysteries in Dragon Age 2, rest assured all of these will be included and discussed by our characters at length. If you feel something's missing, let me know in your reviews.**

**References in here include lots and lots of H.P. Lovecraft, **_**Harry Potter,**__**The Sword In The Stone**_** (purple dragons ftw!) and**_** The Name of the Wind.**_


	3. Through the Wilds

**Forgive the delay, but I've had to do an awful lot of chapter splitting. Putting this and the Kirkwall dock scene together just didn't feel right. With Bethany's inevitable departure at the end of Act One, I want her to be around more. I'm also contemplating a more concise chronicling (alliteration!) of their first year in Kirkwall. **

**Warning: Some disturbing content ahead.**

**16/01/12: Update reposted; my account glitched pretty badly  
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><p><em>The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the stories it loves and believes in. <em>

_- Harold Goddard_

_Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact. _

_- Robert McKee_

The witch stayed true to her word, leading Aveline and the Hawkes to Gwaren where they took ship. None of the grieving refugees would ever forget their brief time with Flemeth in the Wilds, for none could have imagined their homeland to be a place withholding such ghastly secrets from its people. Flemeth however, welcomed the experience, glad to traverse a region of the Wilds that had mostly set itself apart from the tedious half-truths of her own legend. _Mostly. _

By the time of their trek, the Blight had established its destructive stranglehold on Ferelden, and many people in possession of the necessary coin were fleeing to the Marches; with or without the new regent's blessing. Be they nobles or nobodies, countless families had gathered what little they could what little time they had and set out on any vessel capable of lasting such a journey. In a few more hours there would be no still ship and no wharf left fulfilling its role. Even with her prodigious magic and unmatched knowledge of the land, Flemeth informed her followers that the one remaining chance they had of making it through the Wilds quickly enough involved walking down Malencath's Way – the most cursed piece of land in the Korcari Wilds. The witch's revelation was not met with any fear or resistance, for her following had already left the broken bodies of their loved ones to rot away into nothingness on the slopes of the northern wastes and in their minds, nothing worse could befall them.

Love did strange things to people, she mused; strange and silly yet predictable things. Always predictable things. In a small way Flemeth was grateful to see their collective skin thicken so quickly, but wished she did not have to put up with the tiresome symptoms of their sentimentality.

_Oh, the follies of love, _she thought scornfully, seeing the sunken greyness in Aveline's once strong features and the way such stout and sturdy Hawkes seemed to shrink, trembling under the weight of their overindulged emotions. _When will they learn? There can be no room for an encumbrance as destructive and impractical as love: not where they are going._

Yet for all her doubts, more than once Flemeth found her mind and eyes had settled on the young, sword-wielding man never far from the front of the group. _But there is potential in you, Bradon Hawke. Such potential even my own vision dims into uncertainty; thwarts the far-stretching horizon of my mind with impermeable mists and leavens the clarity of my judgement with the usually unthinkable poison of doubt. What will you become?_

She thought of the only other witch in Ferelden, the younger one; the one with her yellow eyes and heart-shaped face. The one with a body still full, fresh and desirable but a mind incomplete and impressionable.

_She must remember her place. She must do her duty._

Within two hours, the party had left the dry, rocky wastes behind, delved far into the Wilds and set their feet on the first few uneven steps of Malencath's Way. Flemeth did not need to recite the tale; for Malencath's wickedness lived on in every feature of his natural namesake. As the woods thickened, as the world darkened and the road sloped ever downward into the deep, more and more insidious layers of the story were pulled away, unmasking the long-gone embodiment of madness.

Malencath had been the cruellest of all Chasind chieftains; only the 'child-devouring' Witches of the Wilds seemed to have left a more infamous mark on the Wilders' history. Like all great Chieftains before and after him, he had been a man of war, claimant to many women and a keeper of their most ancient lore. The story of his origin is a legend almost as old as Flemeth and her many names.

All incarnations of his story fellowship in an elite, inner-circle of details…

_A huntress; tall; strong-limbed; white of hair and great in the ways of the fighting Chasind, ventures too deep into a forest on one ill-fated evening. The forest is entering the final stages of being claimed outright by a fog descending with deceptive quickness._

_Before long she is lost, with no greater change of a saving grace than a fly oblivious to the taught silk wrap that like the fog is silvery white and eerily beautiful but oh so deadly. Unlike a trapped fly, this huntress will not be granted the mercy of death immediately following the ordeal. _

_It happens. Nature watches without intervention. Any divine authority that may exist watches with indifference. The huntress is seized and violated against an evilly-formed rock by a wandering abomination. It goes on through every hour of the night without pause until her entire world is nothing but pain and sickness and blinding white and the thing's hating eyes: two wicked windows showing her all the malice of the Black City. _

_The sun rises and the white mist is strengthened. She's almost blinded now. She can forgive the bountiful sun; it does not mean its misdeed. The creature stops and disappears into the mist. She is left to die, too weak to even sob. The abomination's choice of cover has not lifted with it: for the white mist does not do her the courtesy of fading away with the sunrise. The web always outlives the spider. _

_Hours multiply and death is calling. Death's voice is a tantalising lullaby, and she feels her will waver with each gentle note of the serenade. But she refuses defeat. She lifts her bruised head and looks upon the toothed, lichen-spotted rock against which she has been befouled, seeing the drying burgundy imprint of her blood. The cloudy glare gives it an almost holy, sacrificial significance. She stands and tries to put her torn bear pelt coverings back together. Her hands won't still themselves long enough to allow for any knotting, so she decides to let her blood stick the fur to her skin. There are more than enough elongating red streaks leaking out of her neck and nose and mouth and ears and scalp to form a satisfactory adhesive; the blood-laced vomit that bubbles up within her before bursting out like a hot spring is overkill. _

Only the pain.

Only the sickness.

Only the white.

_Unknown time has passed with her staring at the rock, somehow able to remain vertical for the duration. She can feel the sun's warming caress on her back, and realises her injuries are even worse there. Dozens of lacerations bring forth dozens more elongating red streaks that trickle down her body, down her legs and onto the grass where they become round red hats for dozens of green blades._

It tickles.

_She laughs. She cackles. She's not amused, not even remotely. She's half-mad – no; not even that. The huntress is not mad, having in this moment been cleared of all rudiments that constitute sanity. She can't afford madness, she can't achieve it. She's empty. Yet still she laughs at the tickling sensation. Laughter born of joy, mirth and merriment has become meagre memory; tangy taste from the single bite of an apple that has since decayed and returned to the dust. She moves at last._

_Somehow she makes it back to the camp. She doesn't notice the heartbroken embrace of her father. She can't feel the warm water washing away the blood. She never flinches during the application of stinging, scouring remedies. Her Wilder kin paint themselves every known colour and dance around a raging fire, calling on the aid of gods with names known and forgotten. Incense melds with smoke turning from black to grey as the fire dies down and the huntress remains still and uncured. There can be no consolation for her: a demonic seed is already planted inside the womb. She can feel it burn and grow. Unlike the abomination, who has inadvertently sired a terrible half-human son (she knows it's a son, she just knows) this huntress is not granted the mercy of being ignorant of the evil within her. Her mind returns as her body begins to fail._

_She stares, catatonic at the tent ceiling with her father's hand in her own. The shaman enters, interrupting the first few words of an old ballad she loved as a girl. The huntress speaks for the last time, asking for something denied to all other Wilder women. Her father nods, as does the shaman. In the morning an herbalist brings her a wooden chalice containing a mixture of wallflower, myrrh and wormwood stewed in blood and well-aged wine. He assures her that it will flush the evil seed from her body. _

_The elixir fails. The seed's growth only quickens. The mother-to-be only weakens. Deathroot is added to the potion, but to no avail._

_A month later, with white lightning knifing the night sky and thunder cracking like the whip of an Old God's tail, the child is born. The huntress' father has not moved from her side during this whole time. She does not scream during the birthing and dies with a smile on her face when it's over. The mother never sees the child. The child does not cry. There are no tears in its wicked little dark eyes. The boy's grandfather cannot bring himself to kill the child, and the shaman sees some hope. The shaman raises the child apart from the other Wilders, and the boy grows at an alarming rate. By age five the boy is tall and muscular and white of hair but never speaks. One morning he leaps up during meditation and flees, vanishing into the densely-misted forest in which he was conceived. He returns seven years later with the body of a fully-grown man, and the mentality of a monster. _

_Malencath's reign drenches the Chasind peoples in torrents of blood for many decades. He does not need an army to initially seize power: the Wilds seem to obey his every whim and in only weeks, willing fighters swear allegiance to the half-demon. Blood magic – though permissible among Chasind, becomes as commonplace as regular spellcasting amongst those skilled in the arcane. With a massing horde of summoned demons, blood mages, hulking warriors, slaves and savage beasts, Malencath overpowers tribe after tribe. Rather than fear or fight the hated Witches, he seeks them out. Whether he had any success is not known._

Before suddenly vanishing again as he had done in youth (though this time – to the delight of many; forever) Malencath marked out a sickening trophy. A straight road many miles long was laid out through the middle of a forest; surprisingly near the more civilised lands that would one day become united Ferelden. There, Malencath had the remains of his most reputed enemies hanged up on either side; swaying from the trees, stuck to the branches by the throat on hooks; blue and swollen and ever-watching with their dead eyes. His remaining followers blessed every stone with the vile blood magic rituals that had marked out the peak of his power.

_The web outlives the spider. The road outlives the monster._

This path of destruction became the sacrosanct Malencath's Way. There the Fade remains perilously thin and the land itself seems to know these atrocities should never be forgotten.

Only Flemeth knew the details, the most intimate truths of his origin and endeavours, but words have power, and sometimes stories prove far more potent at burrowing into the soul and laying their eggs than the real truth.

**~o~0~o~**

"Quite a digression there Varric," said Cassandra, raising her black-shadowed eyes and folding gauntleted arms.

The Seeker's steely tone did not match her rather conversational choice of words, and Varric knew this to be a remark requiring every bit as much caution as one of her already signature bouts of dagger-brandishing. He preferred the daggers; he liked their lack of subtlety. He had learned over the years that the weaving together and distribution of words far outshone those of weapons where consequences were concerned.

But thankfully, words always gave more wiggle-room for backup plans than weapons. "Why do you think I told you that little side story?" he asked.

"I'm asking the questions." She took a step towards him into the lamplight, and the white sigil on her breastplate became a close imitation of a true sun, forcing his eyelids to squeeze together. "Are you slowing the pace to give your friend more time, dwarf? Because if you are, I suggest you _stop _right now."

"Nothing so audacious, Seeker," he grunted under the oppressive red of his lids. "Besides, I've no idea where Hawke is, what he's up to…what do I have to stall?"

She backed away again, giving his eyelids a chance to rest.

"The Champion-"

"-didn't listen to me as much as everyone thinks." He smiled fondly before shrugging. "Yes, I was an advisor as much as a friend and I'm proud of it. But when Bradon was driven enough; I could only watch. Anyway, 'give him more time?' – You're not planning to hurt Hawke should you locate him, are you? Because if you are, I suggest _you _stop right now. People tend to die when taking him on."

Varric couldn't stop the smile from spreading over his face as he saw fear enter Cassandra's. Even the capable Sister Nightingale would tremble at the thought of crossing Hawke. He wandered what her lover would make of it, and seconds later had already subconsciously begun spinning the hypothetical tale of Warden versus Champion.

"I'll ask again, Seeker: why did you think I told that little side story?"

Frustration coursed through Cassandra. "That 'side story?' So you _are _digressing."

"Poorly worded," Varric said quickly. "Not a side story, more a piece of flesh on the bone as my old man used to say. Having heard about Malencath and the huntress, what do you think?"

"I think you're up to something! I think you need reminding why you are here and what is expected of you!" She picked up the dagger-pierced tome at Varric's feet and slammed it, flat-side into his chest again. This time Varric enjoyed a split second to brace himself against the impact.

Cassandra pulled the knife out and returned to the room's more obscured end. "Will that suffice? Tell the story Varric. Take prompts from the text if you must; Maker knows there are parts that need clarifying, but don't let me catch you reading that thing out, word-for-word."

Varric sighed and tucked the book under his arm. "Seeker…the rape in that forest didn't really happen. I needn't bore either of us with the details of abomination infertility – but the girl seemed so real when you learned the tragic account of Malencath's supposed origins, didn't she?"

Cassandra remained silent and looked away, knowing no other method of confession she was prepared to impart on a dwarf. She was glad he couldn't see her, though her wordlessness was unmistakeable.

Varric pressed his advantage. "I saw your disgust at what she went through. I saw your relief when I told you her suffering was over. Remember this: to so many people in the tribes, she _is_ real." Varric's leather-gloved fingers came together again, two-by-two. "Yes, there was indeed a Chasind Chieftain named Malencath, and his evil was extraordinary. His enemies died in _untold_ numbers. He showed young maids no more intimate gentleness than his supposed 'father' had done. His rapport with the demonic was so relaxed and natural it should come as no surprise that so many considered him at least half full of their essence."

"Why waste our _time _with this?" she spat with her teeth gritted.

Varric continued as if she hadn't interrupted. "A tale can be as destructive as it is powerful. This war…" he sighed.

"What of it?"

"I'm no sage. I'm no philosopher and I'm certainly no great scholar, but I was right at the heart of what sparked everything which brought you here, and I noticed it had been happening for centuries." He wiped sweat from his brow. "This war is a…failure of empathy."

Cassandra returned to his sight. Her eyebrows went up in derision and then creased down in confusion.

"Not very eloquent, I know," said Varric with another smile. "Too few templars – in positions of actual influence, at least – were prepared to even consider how they made the mages entrusted to their care feel. Too few mages were prepared to even consider how their foraying into blood magic made them appear to others. Too few sisters were prepared to consider anything but some vague, optimistic idea that somehow everything would work itself out."

"You _dare!" _she hissed.

"I do, Seeker," he declared loudly. "The huntress is real to many Wilders and her story makes them weep. That rather…silly figure – I'll admit it – that I mentioned earlier; the _Empress' Point-_wielding Bradon Hawke leading his buxom sister, is real to many mages. In fact, that flawlessly heroic incarnation of Hawke may be the most accurate depiction of him they'll ever be treated to. They believe a lie, and believe it with all their hearts. It's the same for many templars and Andrastians in general. Picture a vilified version of what I told you and you'll understand them better. _You _believed a lie, Seeker. I want you to know how it feels before you think of judging others for doing so."

He ended to a shocked silence.

"Continue," was all Cassandra could say.

**~o~0~o~**

Ask any poor soul who has braved Malencath's Way their opinion of the experience and you will hear similar stories every time. The accounts are almost identical in fact, as their only true variation concerns what will be spoken of first.

Some with start their woeful tale with how they found every sense heightened to a state they had previously considered impossible. When you have gone deep enough into the Wilds, things change. Some are never the same. Every smell, from festering marshland mire to the unnamed beds of black flowers is distinct to the point of violating the nose. Every colour is sharpened. Water, inky-black, slithers through cuts in the ground, speckled every so often by with what little light can seep through masses of withered vegetation overhead. Everything else is an uncaring grey, murky brown or midnight blue. Healthy green is a distant memory, if it ever existed.

Sound grates the ear, imprisoning the traveller in a catacomb of shrieks, creaks, crackles and thuds – all from things out of sight yet never quite far away enough. The sounds betray many beasts otherwise hidden. Blight wolves with coats like silver knives slink through masking undergrowth, waiting to end your life.

The taste of the Wilds – a sickening union of bitterness and pungency – comes free with the winds; spoon-fed until you either adapt or retch. And there is nothing you can safely touch on the Way without the supervision of a native guide. Age has moulded everything in there in accordance with its own will. Sharpness and coldness define the shape and feel of each surface. The threat of infection resides in thorns, needles and nettles. Skin turns to ice when brushed by breeze or leaf.

If not starting with the senses, the traveller will tell how unwelcome they felt. They say a 'trespasser's guilt' descends on you as you are beset by a treacherous, uneven path of poisonous plants and hidden quagmire capable of swallowing you whole. And after that come pilings of rock that fail under human weight, becoming undisturbed graves where insects come to feast on your forgotten flesh. Above are the remaining judgements: birds impossibly large and impossibly cruel and seeds that grow so heavy and so jagged they deal out a crushing death to anything caught beneath their fall. Mists roil up, unprovoked all year round, serving to make any Korcari trap a likelihood.

No matter when they tell this part of their story, the traveller will fear it most. The Way's most frightening feature is not its judgemental emanation, its stalking beasts, many well-formed traps, nor its ability to amplify one's awareness of these gruesome gifts. The worst feature is its abundance of things not fully seen or known; its exploitation of man's inability to grasp the surrounding world as much as he'd like. Nightmares come as naturally as breathing for those able to attain sleep. In winter, many fail to find out where their nightmares end and reality begins – if it ever does. Demons are seen and heard ubiquitously. Tricks of the light become bright eyes. Creaking branches become bloodthirsty moans born of the demonic pleasure of claiming another victim. High-reaching bushes of thorns become horned tails, swishing as the demons play and plan more evil.

More people may have disappeared in the northern wastes than the Way – but only because few were foolish enough to go there. Even the most seasoned Chasind or naturalist knows there are more dangers than they could ever know hidden in its depths.

Yet Flemeth led Aveline and the Hawkes through all of this, sweeping every challenge aside without care. The witch's body exuded a magical warmth that kept the blood-soaked, bare-armed Bradon and Aveline from freezing, and all of them from the otherwise unbeatable fatigue brought on by sparse food and water, together with the rigorous fighting and running that had been undertaken all day. Yet there was nothing in in Flemeth's help or magic that endeared anyone to her: the prowess-enhancement she gave was purely physical.

Grief was a well-fed parasitic worm in the survivors, eating away at what felt like all but the most base of their instincts. Leandra no longer feared her own death. She had seen Malcolm depart an invalid, worn down to a nub by a life of unending rigour. She had seen Carver's violent end on the uncaring slopes of a wasteland. What was left in the world to put the fear of death in her? As long as Bradon and Bethany were safe under the shielding loyalty of a mabari hound, disciplined prowess of a well-trained warrior and seeming omnipotence of this apostate, what did she have to live for?

Her prayers remained unvoiced, held behind trembling white lips. _Oh Maker, take me next, _she begged._ Give my little ones nothing but long years, warm summers, true loves and many children of their own. Bless Aveline as you have blessed me. Sustain her through widowhood as you sustained me. Gift her with long life and friendship as you gifted me. _

Carver's greatsword was an anchor on Bradon's back; determined to still him with guilt and shame before sinking him into drowning depths from which there could be no escape.

Bethany's wooden burdens evoked a similar feeling. So much power and history in her father's old instrument, so much responsibility, so many reminders of his greatness and the shadow she occupied in the wake of his departure. How could she honour his name when she couldn't defend his flesh and blood?

Aveline's shaking hand kept darting to the hilt of Wesley's sword. She couldn't bear to touch his ceremonial knife. Yet the thought of throwing it away into the ebony-coloured slime beneath her boots was even worse.

Overall, they stopped only twice. Their first stop was before a small waterfall: an icy, moonstruck curtain of swaying, silvery blue arching over the rock and ending in bursts of white spray. The overhanging stream gushed cruelly, breaking off in many forks, becoming lost amid uncoloured weeds and a throng of dead trees before ending in more mire in the dark.

The crimson-gowned Flemeth led them to the river's edge, where cruel currents lapped dangerously close.

"Come," she said.

Flemeth's five followers started forwards, too addled by unforgiving memories to think of second-guessing her. Bradon and Aveline were at the front, staying close to the witch; hoping to continue feeling her aural warmth.

"Not you two," Flemeth added, looking at Bethany and Leandra. The two women stopped, and Flemeth stepped into the water.

A wind blew and the waves became sharp peaks, intensifying by the second. How would Flemeth be able to-?

But the soon wind hushed, and even the waters obeyed the witch. They stilled around her, and the bereaved warriors followed.

Aveline went in first. She felt strangely glad to feel the cleansing freshness of water wash away the darkspawn blood, which had become a crust of black on her skin and clothing. But there was still some dark red staining her: on her tunic, in her orange hair. Red: clear and terrible, red on her hands and face. _Wesley's blood. _

Aveline let out a miserable gasp before sucking the evil air in again. She bent forward, hoping the silver-layered peaks would stab through what was left of her heart, wanting to breathe in and let the waters to fill her, _end _her.

"Stop," commanded Flemeth. "There will be no need for that."

The waters around the witch remained still. Her dragon-like coverings appeared dry despite their immersion, just as the fires had not tarnished her cloak.

"Young Mater Hawke," said Flemeth. The witch's bright, sulphurous eyes were still on the shaken Aveline.

Bradon followed, feeling the still, refreshing water as Aveline did. Carver's sword was an even greater burden on his body. Maybe it would tarnish his soul. Occie paddled at his side. The dog's panting steamed into white ghosts on the freezing air.

Flemeth smiled and turned away to the furious spray of the waterfall, carving a feathery curl in the stream. When she reached the curtain it peeled apart with a grotesque, sucking noise; the gurgle of a dying, blood-choked ogre. A stone-arched void of blackness greeted her, and she went in.

"Come!" she repeated. Her weathered rasp turned to a resounding cackle in the cave. The water knitted together, once again becoming a curtain of silver. Bradon, Aveline and Occie went through together. Icy thuds assaulted them on all sides, every pore felt drenched. Their breathing stopped at the sensation.

There was nothing visible in the cave beyond. Even with Flemeth somewhere nearby, the shivers came. Light then flooded the chamber as flame burst from Flemeth's gloved palm. The unruly eruption was soon tame, becoming a sphere in her long fingers. The well-lit witch examined them closely.

"Yes…yes, that's most of the blood gone. But infection is as subtle as it is deadly. Your hound will need to do the rest. Sit."

She pointed at a small, smooth rock on their left. Bradon went first. He stayed as still as he could under the unpleasant sensations of Occie's foul breath and tickling tongue. After too long, the dog was done.

Aveline managed to control her winces better, but felt close to tears when the mabari cleaned off the last of Wesley's blood. She was horribly confused: torn between her self-loathing over shedding it and the sadness of seeing the last of it go.

She tensed her well-developed muscles and shook herself. _It's not what he would have wanted, _she thought as the dog's work neared its end. _Clinging on like this…he told you to live, self-pity destroys everything but itself. You loved him enough to respect his final wish. _

She shot a glance at Bradon, who did not notice. He was hurting every bit as much as she. He was still responsible for more people; and he was already proving far more capable than she. _They'll be a time to remember. Until that comes, you have people to protect. They saved your life, woman. _

"Flemeth," said Bradon when Occie had finished and began groaning and spluttering. "He's had too much blood. Infection in hounds is rare but-"

"But he can be helped," the witch finished. A smaller rock in the cave's corner splintered into a dozen pieces, revealing a velvety flower beneath. It had the colour of cloud and the smell of honey; a delicate white blossom seamlessly flowing into dark red, from its curvaceous brim to its centre. Even Flemeth's bright eyes and hand of fire dimmed by comparison.

"Give him the petals," said the witch as Occie's trembling limbs folded and he collapsed.

Moving with a quickness that defied every icy tremor in his body, Bradon plucked off each soft petal and placed them into Occie's open, black-stained mouth.

"_Eat," _he urged. "Eat Occie!"

"The change will be gradual," Flemeth drawled dispassionately. "I wouldn't allow him to fight for a few weeks. Keep him well away from darkspawn when you arrive in Kirkwall – by that I mean steer clear of Sundermount for a little while. I am not without patience."

After a few tense minutes of wheezing and weary chomping, Occie got up on still shuddering legs, offering his master and the witch a weak but sure noise of gratitude.

"Thank you," Bradon gasped, "I don't know how to-"

"Yes you do."

The iron bas-relief twitched in Bradon's sodden pocket.

"A favour for a favour," Flemeth remarked.

Bradon turned to Aveline, and for a few seconds found himself taken aback by what he caught a glimpse of. The hard and humourless severity of the woman had been stripped away; long orange hair once tied and ponytailed hung loose, plastered on a glowing white collarbone dappled with freckles. Emerald eyes completed the image. She looked beautiful; uniquely so; more than she seemed to be aware.

His momentary curiosity went unnoticed: Aveline stood still in the light of fire and water, watching the revived Occie with glassy eyes and a clenched jaw.

Flemeth sensed her resentment. "There was no cure for your man, my dear," she croaked.

The former soldier responded with a terse nod and marched out of the cave without waiting for her current guide's consent.

"What happened?" said Leandra as the group reunited on the shadowy riverside.

"Occie was infected," said Bradon, breathless from a cold too paralysing to allow further explanation.

Flemeth raised her hands and whispered in the wind, performing another esoteric spell. Bradon thought of white spiders as he watched her fingers flex. Moments later, a wonderful wave of heat washed over himself, Aveline and Occie, drying their skin and clothing in a few seconds.

"Onward," said Flemeth when the wave subsided, bored with their expressions of appreciation. "One more stop before the shoreline."

Their only sustenance came in the form of a few supped mouthfuls of water filling the cobbled, ivy-covered ruin of a former fountain; a platter in the hand of an angel, face weathered by centuries of all the cruelties that the harsh Wilds could administer. After that, they ate one or two bites of fruit; icy, slimy and tasteless. These were ingested on nothing but their faith in Flemeth's words, as the witch claimed there was nothing else safe for eating or drinking on their particular road. This second stop, in the shade of cavernous ruins and prickly overgrowth, was all the rest required for their remaining journey. Flemeth never drank, never ate, never rested and had so far never said a word that was not urgently needed.

After more uncounted hours of wordless wandering down the Way, they stopped at an apparent dead-end of steep stone climbing into the world above. Flemeth commanded them to remain still, and took a few paces from them.

She whispered again. None could hear what exactly, and if they had, the language would have remained indecipherable. Each whisper doubled and tripled and quadrupled as soft echoes; call-and-response utterances from disembodied voices above, beneath and all around. Bradon leaned in and caught a string of disconnected but recognisable words.

"The promise you made to me…the secrets you took…pieces kept…is open…your promise, child…"

Flemeth's turned her coil-crowned head to a nearby tangle of thorny branches that formed a jagged wall between two towering black trees. The branches cracked, split and flew apart, letting in the first sunlight seen in hours; sunlight so powerful nothing beyond the gap was visible in any detail. It was golden and gorgeous in such a miserable place.

"And now, I must say my goodbyes."

No blinding envelopment of white and gold light encased the retiring witch this time. No colossal sky-winger flew up through the trees and to the heavens beyond. Instead, Flemeth simply stepped away from the others, downhill past a stretch of bubbling black mud and into deeper shadow. She was gone a second later in a swish of her cloak, consumed by the ravenous dark.

Her departure was felt straight away. Hours of sore muscles, hunger, thirst and sleep deprivation that Flemeth had kept at bay descended on the travellers. Bethany almost collapsed into her mother's arms, Aveline and Bradon's knees jerked, mirroring Occie's movement. They then scrambled through the sunlit gap like imprisoned rats, fearing it would close itself again with the supernatural wind gone. The biggest surprise awaited them.

**~o~0~o~**

Bethany was the first to speak again. "Bradon…" she whispered. "Mother…"

They were overlooking the Ferelden shoreline. Behind them were no Wilds, but ordinary woods. None of them could see anything that even remotely resembled what they had spent hours travelling through.

"What did she _do?" _Aveline gasped. She turned to Bethany. "Is this even possible on such a scale?"

Bethany had no real answers. Her mind flashed back to the circle of stakes and stones back in the northern wastes – where she had found herself and her family moved out of the ogre's reach without explanation.

"Instinct, she said out loud, more to herself than the others. "Father said it happens sometimes, but never met anyone who could control it."

"Instinct?" said Aveline. "What?"

Bethany shook her head. "There are some things about magic I don't even want to know."

A cobbled pathway sloped down between two cliffs jutting from the beach below, which was grainy and dull like an unwashed cloth. At the pathway's end they spotted a small, flat-bottomed fishing cog alone at the end of a long line of ship-less quays which were under constant attack from thrashing grey waves. A dense crowd had gathered at the foot of the cog's only ramp.

Walkways of splintery wooden planks creaking in the wind ran from the quays off into the far distance, where the vague outline of Gwaren's outer city limits was visible among immense trees. None in the weary group could see far enough to determine whether any damage had been done to the Terynir by the Blight, but no smoke stroked the sky, and no flame flickered. Seeing the Terynir, even so little of it, brought Aveline's accusation of betrayal back into the forefront of Bradon's mind.

The words had been uttered an eon ago: when there were three Hawke children and two Vallens in their party.

Bradon touched Aveline's arm. She knew why.

"Not now Hawke. I'll tell you the details when we're safe. There may be others on board who know more than I; they share his hometown after all, and we'll be out of his grip if the indictment gets turned on us as it did for the Wardens."

Another wind roared, this one over the murky sea. The Hawkes and lone Vallen crossed the beach in great discomfort, feeling the sting of disturbed sand whip over their residual wounds. Bethany tried another arcane shield in the hope of providing a temporary but nonetheless relieving shelter from the storm, but faltered when the noises of the crowd before them entered earshot.

Bradon stepped to the front of the group again, fighting to subdue the aches, pains and shakes surging through him. He knew the importance of the group's cooperation, having been saved by it many times during their battle with the darkspawn. But there was something else deep inside him now – something new, like a curled-up, sleeping dragon – something that did not endear him to the idea of being led, or more specifically; not being his family's protector. His father was gone. Carver was gone, and he owed his mother and sister a better life, one where they could grieve these losses but look to a hopeful future, knowing nothing could be counted a total waste.

He already felt an admirable and strongly-rooted comradeship with Aveline; perhaps thrown in with an intriguing and unspoken one-upmanship. He liked Aveline. He liked her fighting skills, her intolerance of nonsense, and the fact that her militarisation had not diminished any of her humanity.

As the weary troupe reached their fellow stranded Fereldens at the crowded quay, they discovered something far worse than first feared. The cries of the stranded had been distressing from afar, but up close their stench claimed dominion over even sea salt, fish and rotten wood. They were a jumble of dead, dying, wounded and woeful; struck down in youth or old age; highborn and lowborn. Rudimentary bandages had yellowed and greyed over wounds gushing blood and thick pus. Many people were convulsing, bringing up black vomit and screaming their throats raw. The last of Gwaren's scarce, overworked and underfunded healers and herbalists were scattered among them, applying inadequate doses of potion and casting largely ineffectual spells.

A bald, hunchbacked man with a twisted face clambered awkwardly down the ship's only ramp. "Five more for the boat?" he wheezed, examining each of them with lopsided eyes. He then pointed a stubby finger at Bethany. "Or does this healer need a bloody entourage?"

"We came here hoping you'd be shipping out to Kirkwall soon," said Bradon stiffly. "Aren't you taking any more civilians?"

The man groaned, showing teeth rotted into various shades of black and yellow. His breath smelled as bad as he looked. _"Civilians? _With a mabari hound, two magic staffs and three blades? I think you'd be more use here."

Aveline frowned and opened her mouth.

"And you two look like military!" he added to her and Bradon. "Don't think we ought to be runnin' the risk o' takin' on a coupla deserters!"

"There's no army left to desert from," said Aveline, stepping forward with the already familiar sharpness in her eyes again. "There hasn't been for a long time."

"The Teyrn begs to differ!" the disfigured sailor countered. "And you can try tellin' that to my nephews, gallopin' off to a civil war, knee-deep in guts right now I bet." He spat on the sand. _"Idiots! _Sodding civil war it is now. And for what?"

"Even if you were taking on deserters," said Bradon, "what risk would it be? Do the Marchers have any authority over us Fereldans?

"No, but his thing's a fishing vessel, son. I intend to use it when the refugees don't need it no more; so we can't take on anybody with that Blight disease. Everyone else in the hold is clean, but being military, you people 'ave prob'ly faced darkspawn already."

He glanced at some of the less fortunate victims sprawled behind them on the beach. "Thedas don't really care about the spreadin' o' refugees, but plague's a no-no."

"Noddy!" yelled an unseen man from somewhere on the deck. "They look and sound alright to me."

The man called Noddy turned his shiny bald head partway towards the ship. "We've got a mage here!" he shouted back. "Pretty capable one by the looks of it," he added with a wary frown.

Hating himself, Bradon put on his best artificial smile and adopted an enthusiastic voice not unlike those that had belonged to the snake-oil merchants foolish enough to set up temporary shop in Lothering with his father around. "Surely you'd rather see a mage taken to somewhere like Kirkwall, one of the most pious states in Thedas? They don't tolerate apostasy there now, do they?"

He was prepared for the reaction: Bethany grabbed his wrist and squeezed painfully, Aveline and Leandra made partly-stifled noises of disgust, Occie growled. Bradon kept his eyes on Noddy, who after half a minute of contemplation looked convinced enough.

"Alright then, get on," the fisherman mumbled. " 'Ang on," he added with another glance at Bethany, "the girl didn't volunteer to be a healer, did she? We could always use another back he-"

"No," said Bethany, turning pink and feeling like the most disgustingly selfish person alive. A trembling old man with flecks of blood in his wispy hair caught her eye for half a second. She stared at her blood-stained shoes.

"Hmm," said the fisherman. He clambered up again and opened a grate on the deck. " 'S'down there. Nuffin' I can do about the smell, and I ain't referring to no fish."

"_Beth," _Bradon whispered as they walked up the creaking wooden ramp. Leandra and Aveline listened. _"You know I'd never sell you to the templars. We'll think of something when we get there. I promise."_

They went into the dark, stench-filled hold, entering another dense crowd of refugees – coughing, crying and consoling one another with unsure words and fervent prayers; old and young, strong and weak. Most had obtained patched grey blankets from the more generous crew members. Others had taken off clothing to wrap up small children. The Hawkes and lone Vallen squeezed themselves into a damp alcove between a large family and frail old couple, who gifted them with brave smiles. A creak of wood, clatter of chains and assortment of sailor shouts told everyone that the newest arrivals would be the last on board.

Leandra took the hands of her surviving children. "I'm so proud of you two," she breathed. "And Aveline; there's nothing I can do to repay you."

Aveline nodded and leaned back against the wood. "I'm every bit as indebted to your family, Mistress Hawke."

Occie seemed to notice the younger widow's sense of detachment and gave her cheek a quick, grateful lick as somebody on the deck above covered the grating with cloth, darkening the hold further. She responded with a rather embarrassed stroke of the dog's muzzle, glad the darkness had kept this exchange between the two of them.

With a final shout from the captain – this one loud enough to rise over the vocalising wounded – the ship lurched and was on the waves, onwards to the uncertain world beyond.

* * *

><p><strong>This was pretty experimental. Let me know what you think. <strong>

**References in this chapter: Eudora Welty's **_**A Memory, **_**Lovecraft's **_**The Dunwich Horror **_**and **_**Call of Cthulhu, **_**Martin's **_**A Game of Thrones, **_**King's **_**The Dark Tower.**_


	4. Love and Loss

_The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, is in its loyalty to each other._

_- Mario Puzo_

For two weeks, Ferelden's last free fishing vessel cascaded over the infamous Waking Sea, forced to endure a thrashing from its many ferocious storms; tossed here and there by white-capped waves of such mountainous size and unstoppable power they could have been mistaken for the death throes of nature herself. Above, dense clouds of smoky grey swelled and spread until the sky was blotted out, as though a great fire had covered the world beneath. With the grim cloud came the low, brutal growl of thunder and whip crack of lightning. The rain came down in unceasing icy torrents. To all aboard, it felt like the Blight's black, death-dealing hand had reached out, clawing at the fleeing boat tauntingly, telling them that it would come after them should their homeland fail.

Day and night traded places as time trundled on in the ship's stinking hold. The nauseating bombardment of waves above, around and beneath kept every refugee awake at night, meaning they could only steal sleep for brief, unsatisfying periods during daylight hours. Vomit spewed from the mouths of the unprepared, adding to the array of evil stenches. One hour into the voyage, the thick blanket of dark green wool draped over the grate above was swollen with rain and dripping with maddening consistency. Three hours later it was peeled back and scarce food supplies were dropped in: stale bread slices, hard cheese wedges and poorly-sealed canteens. First sight of these helpings of manna reduced most recipients to near savagery. Man, woman and child scrambled towards the sustenance in momentary rays of light before attacking one another; tugging at slices of bread, scratching hands that clasped cheese pieces, almost biting canteens open and hitting anybody they considered encumbered with too much of all three. It worsened when the heavy shadow returned. Those in the hold protesting their countrymen's divisive behaviour found themselves outnumbered, drowned out by the yelping and snarling and the hurried slurping of water.

But none of the opportunists had anticipated Aveline, who soon put an effortless stop to their greed. Under her unflinching supervision, food and water was carefully partitioned, passed around and stored in the likely event of further shortage. She never once needed to even acknowledge her sword.

When the redheaded woman returned to her spot against the curved wood and hissed a demand of _"Why _didn't you help me?" to Bradon she was given only a vague, faraway noise in return.

The young warrior was immersed in another plan. This one centred on getting Bethany into Kirkwall unnoticed. _Well, she isn't the problem really, _he thought. His sister's knack for befriending templars and Chantry Sisters alike (often in a genuine manner – she was far from manipulative) had aided the family a great deal, acting as a healthy counterbalance to her father's occasional bluntness and cheek with professional Andrastians, until any suspicious sighting in or around Lothering that could have passed as magic never resulted in her even being considered a suspect.

Bradon shifted onto his side until he was facing Bethany's silhouette. She was curled up beside Leandra, head resting on her shoulder. _Not Bethany then. No heavy risk, but the staves… _He sighed and felt his lids drooping heavily over stinging eyes.

"Hey," he whispered, nudging his sister softly, _"Beth?" _

"I don't know!" she moaned in a muffled voice, sounding like a restless dreamer caught between the Fade and the waking world.

"What?"

"I don't know how we're going to sneak me into Kirkwall," Bethany's eyes opened halfway and she smiled in the gloom, "or my conspicuous equipment for that matter."

"It's not _you _I'm worried about," Bradon said. "Well I _am, _but – you know what I mean. You've had a lifetime to practice blending in and evading capture. Inanimate objects, on the other hand…"

He ran one over each staff; one of them smooth, the other rough and worn; one embodying youthful energy, the other exemplifying aged wisdom; both powerful and irreplaceable.

Bethany's head jerked up when she noticed what he was doing, and her whole body found a temporary boon of vitality. Bradon caught an unmistakeable glimmer of worry in her eyes, despite the sparse light.

"Bradon you know I can't afford to get rid of-"

"I'm not enforcing it," he said evenly, caught once more between two unfavourable courses of action. Throwing the staves overboard into the roiling and receding peaks of water seemed the lesser of two evils right now, but no amount of reasoning would stop it from being an evil. "I'm just reminding you that we don't currently have any loose floorboards to hide these things under."

She regarded him with curious eyes and snickered. "Well, this isn't exactly a top-notch vessel; pulling the floor out from under us shouldn't prove too hard."

A smile spread over Bradon's tired, dirty face; a smile totally unlike the detestable fakery he had pulled earlier. This one felt like the first genuine expression of merriment in years; something anachronistic, something borrowed from a sun-kissed time preceding all the ashes and pools of blood and heaps of bodies that already threatened to define his life. For that small moment, as matching brown eyes met amid a sea of misery and over a sea of horrors, Bradon felt the pangs of each bruise and cut regress into comforting warmth, even his lids lightened.

"You overestimate my abilities," he said, allowing a telling touch of flippancy access to his voice, and his smile to become a cheeky grin. "An easy mistake for an adoring younger sister to make, I suppose."

Bethany giggled from combined amusement and disbelief. "Too true! So much for hoping you'll overpower every templar and take over the city when we dock."

"Give it time Beth. Give it time."

She yawned and closed her eyes again. "Well, I can count on you making me laugh at least."

"Of course," said Bradon, raising his voice over the noisy expulsions of another vomiting shipmate. "That's all I can really outright promise anymore," he added mostly to himself.

Joking had come easily to Bradon back in Lothering; he'd always felt that he somehow owed it to his family. With Father juggling the responsibility of family with the simultaneous indulgence and suppression of his very nature, Bethany learning in a likewise manner, Carver torn between his love for them and resentment of them and Mother keeping everyone in check, Bradon tried to ease the hardship, for himself as much as the rest of them. He knew now that he'd taken it all for granted. Almost any life was preferable to the one they currently lived, and the one it seemed they would face.

"We could always ask Occie to bury them somewhere for us," Bethany said, breaking her brother's trail of thought.

Occie chirped and started frantically scratching the boards beneath, trying to dig like he had done back in Lothering where his countless trinkets and treasures still lay hidden deep in the ground. After a few moments and several worried glances from the other refugees who were unsure of the hound's power, Occie looked to Bradon, awaiting his master's permission to continue.

"Not now," Bradon chuckled, tapping the dog's back. "But it's a good idea for when we dock, provided he can get away quickly enough. I doubt they'll let us just walk in there unsupervised."

"Hmmm," his sister murmured. The soft sands of Kirkwall's notorious Wounded Coast would provide Occie with a haven of potential hiding places, for the staves and many other things. "Cheer up," she added when seeing her brother's still-fallen face. "Have you already forgotten what's waiting for us? Soon we'll have a rich, resentful relative to leech off."

Leandra shifted and mumbled something incoherent yet rather aggrieved. Bradon and Bethany lowered their voices further, unwilling to impart further worry on a woman who had been through more than enough already.

Bradon considered the idea. "Wow, you're right, I almost _had _forgotten."

"If he hasn't blown…"

Bradon stopped listening. He tried to envision some form of luxury for the three of them, bereft of Lothering's biting winters, large spiders and intrusive templars; a place where song and laughter filled a never-ending maze of gold-rimmed, tapestried halls, all of them leading to an indulgence of grandiose chambers: rooms of unblemished white marble banded with silverite and white steel, rooms with vaulted ceilings and crystal chandeliers, food-heavy tables stretching so far they strained the eye; a place where Mother could live out her days at peace, where Bethany could enjoy the fullness of an unrestrained life, where Carver would be immortalised in a proud portrait.

He failed. Following the thought of Carver, every chamber his now fading mind's eye wandered through became empty, dark and dusty. The vaulted ceilings cracked and crumbled. Cobwebs stretched from each prong of the now grime-covered chandelier. Where there had been song was only silence, then the distant weeping of a woman…then a shadowed mass appeared in the middle of the neglected floor, and Bradon wandered towards it, backed by a strange light that flickered as candles did. Carver stared up at him, his face whiter than the marble had been, his eyes lacking all the light and life of the former vision. The weeping faded away, and Carver's pale lips parted. Blood, dark and terrible, seeped out like a thick slithering snake. The weeping was replaced by a slow, methodical creaking noise.

"_It hurts brother, feeling your spine come apart so slowly…"_

Bradon squeezed his eyes shut.

"_Bradon?_

…_.Bradon?"_

"What?" he gasped.

Several heads turned in their direction, and the few visible faces appeared even more worried than they had been during Occie's brief bout of tunnelling.

"I said, if Uncle Gamelan hasn't blown it all on Orlesian cheeses and…ladies of the evening," Bethany said, turning pink and avoiding her brother's eyes, though whether she did so from embarrassment over what they were discussing or fear over his sudden change of mood, he did not know.

"Don't be too surprised if he has."

Their mother had never spoken highly of Gamlen, keeping minimal and vague correspondence with the man and speaking of him only when the strength and regularity her children's questioning had made evasion impossible.

"You look as tired as I feel, big brother."

"Hmmph," Bradon grunted, rubbing his nose and trying to supress a yawn.

"One problem at a time right?" Bethany's eyes closed and she settled herself back on their mother's still shoulder. "Darkspawn troops, darkspawn ogres, ancient beings, Wilds, boat ride. The rest can wait, I suppose."

"Alright," Bradon said with finality, and another half yawn. He grabbed a nearby blanket and checked it for any rot or vomit, before draping it over her. "Try to get some sleep; you've probably done more spellcasting today than the last ten years combined."

Bethany made a drowsy noise and curled up further.

"I don't want to Bradon," she whimpered quietly, sounding like a frightened child once more.

"Why?"

"I'll see him Bradon."

Bradon gulped, having been so wrapped up in the insanity of the day he'd forgotten. "So will the rest of us Beth. I've…got nothing to say but that."

"I'm sorry," she exclaimed, loudly and unexpectedly, as he had done when pulled from the horrific imaginary Hawke Estate.

Bradon frowned and faced her again. Several other crouched bodies in the hold shuffled around, ruffling their damp blankets and clothing, some trying to move away from the vocal siblings, some appearing as if they wished to begin listening in.

"Sorry for what Beth?"

"For being a piece of luggage," she whimpered. Her eyes shone. "For holding you and Carver back from so much and forcing you to do so many chores you didn't want to. For all the stupid risks I took. Father's lessons were as much about the taming of pride as they were about controlling magic." She began to cry. "I could never bring myself to admit how burdensome I've been! We're out of Lothering and I'm still an obstacle to our safety; I'm _still-"_

"Sorry for your inborn nature?" hissed Bradon scathingly. She couldn't fall apart; not now; not when they were so close to a new and freer life, just as Father had intended. "You should never be. _Ever. _No Maker would punish someone for the gifts or inclinations it gave them. Magic comes as naturally to you as breathing. Steer clear of anyone who tries to instil shame because of that."

Bethany appeared pleased, though still somewhat resistant. "But Carver-"

"Loved you Beth. He protected you his whole life, he _gave _his life for all of us. I'll be there as long as you need me, and I know that won't be forever."

Bradon unconsciously touched the spongy, bruised part of his abdomen where the genlock bolts had struck as Bethany's self-shaming and resistance to his words melted away into a deeply assured gratitude. She opened her mouth again, but her cut her off.

"Don't think you owe me anything either," he said firmly. "We're family, we're equals. That settles it."

Bethany leaned up kissed his cheek. "Thanks Bradon," she whispered.

The refugees enjoyed a few minutes of what came close to silence. The cruel sea seemed to have tired itself out for the moment. Bradon curled up between his family and Aveline, before ordering Occie to do the same.

"Bradon?" Bethany sounded very close to sleep.

"Yes?"

"When we were…fighting the ogre back there…" Her voice cracked and broke off.

"What?"

"Do you remember when it charged at us? In the stone circle?"

"I do." The moment had been a blur and adrenaline rush, but he could recall the lumbering beast, the brief certainty of his own impending death and then the inexplicable safety.

"What do _you _think happened?"

"Me?" He yawned. "I think you underestimate your abilities."

**~o~0~o~**

Aveline was seated against the hull. She had been watching the two of them with one interested eye open and a curiosity that grew with each passing moment.

"Don't worry!" Bradon said, jerking his shaggy head in her direction. "I haven't forgotten about you. Do you want three Hightown mansions or four?"

Aveline opened her other eye and regarded him with mixed feelings, impressed at the younger man's ability to find humour in such a situation and at the same time rather irked by it.

"A tempting offer," she drawled. "But I think you know where I'll end up."

"The City Guard?" Bradon said without letting a second pass.

"Yes." She pulled her fat, grey iron longsword out of the darkness and placed it on her lap, stroking the blade's flat side, which was still thinly caked with a layer of black poison. "Being a fighter was…" she clicked her tongue and turned to him …"pretty much all my father conditioned me for."

"And your mother?" Bradon blurted, a little too abruptly.

Aveline's eyes fell back to the blade, devoid of anger but very much alight with the effort of a carefully-considered answer. The younger warrior sat up once again and crawled to her side.

"I'm sorry," Bradon said. "I hope you understand my intentions weren't intrusive."

Aveline nodded, eyes still on the blade. Her stiff neck muscles twitched.

Bradon tried another smile, and found his face was beginning to sting from so many attempts. "It must be a side-effect of the life debt thing between us. You end up getting far too nosy."

She raised an eyebrow. "Just that?"

"Well, us Hawkes are like that for a reason. That's the funny thing about having a single dark, family secret keeping us all together; hiding Father and Bethany's magic from the world meant the Hawkes never hid anything from each other. Made me a little too open with other families, I suppose. Just…take it as a sign that I like you."

"Done," said Aveline, "though I suspected as much when you were busy saving my life." She set the blade down. "You're quite a fighter, Hawke."

"Thanks. You're not so bad yourself."

"Though your balance could do with some work, and you expend energy too quickly."

Hawke blinked and Aveline leaned further back, bathing her face in deeper shadow. Was that a smirk on her face?

"And you could be a little faster too," she continued.

"Well now!" he laughed. "Somebody's making some bold claims!"

Aveline's tone was calm, though had an edge of enjoyment to it. "Just a fact, Hawke. A future Guard Captain _must _make these observations if her team is to survive. Consider yourself practice."

"I'm honoured, future Captain. We'll have to spar when we reach Kirkwall." He winked at her challengingly. "No backing down; not after what you just said."

"Done, Master Hawke."

"And I thought my harshest fighting critics would die with Father and Carver." He shook his head. "No, it's wrong to think like that. Father only ever wanted me to protect myself properly. Carver…well…he cared deep down, never won a brutal sparring match without stopping to ask me if I was okay several times when all the onlookers had departed."

"It's good that you've all stayed close," Aveline said softly. "Wesley saw so many families torn apart by magical births – the worst involved overzealous parents drowning…" She stopped and grimaced, closed her eyes, disgusted with herself. "I'm sorry," she lowered her voice and looked around to see if anybody had overheard, "saying such things in here of all places."

Bradon was more surprised than horrified. "I must admit, wise and fair as my father was, I always suspected the family was getting a rather one-sided account. I'd never heard of anything like that, only gloomy tales of faceless, armour clad boogeymen snatching babies from their beds or dragging shackled children into the Towers."

"And you were not lied to. Wesley didn't deny for a moment that the Order was home to more than a few corrupt templars. He was focused primarily on the purity of his own duty, never categorised mages as some nameless, faceless mass of dogs to be disciplined, never did the same to the other templars either. He always tried to remind himself and others that both sides consist of individuals. I think if all templars saw things the same way, half of the Chantry's problems would vanish overnight. Still, nothing disturbed me more than hearing about what goes on in Par Vollen among the kossith."

"I think we can just agree that mages are pissed on wherever they are."

A hint of jocularity creased Aveline's otherwise thoughtful face. "Not quite how I would have phrased it but, yes. It's a poisoned chalice to be a mage or find yourself tasked with organising their-"

"Imprisonment," said Bradon flatly, eyes on the wooden floor.

"Which brings us to something else I'd rather get out of the way _now."_

"What?"

Aveline came out of the shadow altogether. "Earlier I told us we could hate each other when we were safe from the horde-"

"That's not going to happen Aveline! Not after everything we've already-"

"I know Hawke. But the fact remains: I was married to a templar."

The word stuck in her throat, seemed to fill it with bile, with poison. _Was._

"And you want to know if this is going to be a source of on-going tension when I move my careless, adventurous backside to the devout Kirkwall, likely fending off templars left, right and centre?" he droned.

"Something like that, yes."

His voice regained its former gentleness. "You don't have anything to worry about. I'll admit; I've no love for the Order's goals as a whole but…like you said; it is made up of individuals. The only thing that frightens me as much as than seeing Bethany treated like a nameless, faceless enemy is seeing myself do the same to a templar. Maker, sometimes I even forget Carver was named after one."

"Indeed?"

"Yes. But to answer that question: _no."_

"Good," she stated with surprising relief.

The boat began to rock again, and the thunder bellowed above.

"Aren't you now going to tell me that as a City Guard, you may end up with no choice but to seek out Bethany?"

She frowned. "I'm surprised you'd think that, Hawke."

"I don't really, but it's a question that needs to be asked at least. An apostate in Kirkwall is going to come up on somebody's paperwork at some point."

Aveline raised a hand to her cheek, trying to hide a blush by scratching a non-existent itch. "I don't like saying it outright but…you have my word. I'll do everything I can to look the other way, but I can't guarantee the same where the other guards are concerned."

"I'm not asking you to. That's all we need."

"Glad to put your worries to rest. I'm sure it's been on your mind for a while."

"It has," said Bradon, suddenly remembering another pressing matter. "Almost as much as my curiosity over how a brilliant military tactician could pull a stupid move like betraying the Wardens and the King's army."

Aveline groaned in exhaustion and gifted him with an impressed, yet reluctant smile. "You're sharp Hawke. But we'll go over everything tomorrow."

"Done." Bradon returned to his position on the floor. "And again: thank you."

"Just one more thing," said the redhead. Hawke heard the well-hidden amusement return to her. Her body didn't have the reserves to recount Ostagar, but she could ask this question.

"What are you _really_ going to do when we arrive at Kirkwall Bradon? You don't strike me as the type to just sit around spending coin in a huge house. And no offense, but you don't seem City Guard material either."

"None taken. Mother always said the City Guard were very fond of their little anti-mage slurs."

"And _my_ mother told me a lot about Lothering; about how its winters were harsh even by Ferelden's standards, and that this made them some of the nation's toughest people. How many of its younger, stronger men were driven to the military to avoid the static dullness of village life, and adventuring after that. You're out of the military now. So I was wondering…"

He laughed again. "Adventuring, of course!"

Aveline sighed and closed her eyes for the last time that day. "Good to know."

It took a while for sleep to take her, fear of the inevitable dreams were to blame over everything external.

_Oh Wesley, what could have been_. _You should be here, by my side, debating the Hawkes over the sanctity of your duties until I nag you into submission. _

She could still hear the slashing of genlock metal that had sent him spiralling into death. If he had been more alert…no: if she had been sharper with a shield…her face fell into her hands and she took another deep, calming breath. This was going nowhere. Would she doom herself to years of it?

Aveline didn't know which of them to blame, and liked the idea of having nobody to blame even less.

She could still hear the witch's words: _'Is it fate or chance? I can never tell.' _If one such clearly as old and wise as Flemeth could not unravel the mysteries of such things, what hope was there for her?

_Everything's changed. You have others who depend on you now. Honour him by fully living every day his sacrifice gave you. _

**~o~0~o~**

All through the first night at sea, and for many that followed, Bethany dreamed purely in memories…

_These are typical days of Ferelden summer; bright and pleasant and warm yet always underscored by a subtle chill that never quite manages to depart. Lothering's villagers stroll through tall, yellow grass and over stretches of cobbled stone and hardened mud, exchanging smiles and pleasantries in a brief but unfailingly sincere manner, the way only a humble villager can. Girls in patched dresses skip on the ancient grey bridge, rolling their eyes at the boys, who shout and scream on slippery mud slopes beneath, playing Wardens and Griffons until their mothers emerge from thin air armed to the teeth with washcloths, ready to rub those dirty faces pink. _

_Young, golden-haired Sister Marchand delights all with her singing of the Chant. Though like the weather, all piety in Lothering's young men brought on by the sight of Andraste's standard on her robe or the Word in her voice is underscored by shameful desires that will not be reawakened until Sister Leliana's brief tenure. _

_Bethany Hawke is cooped up in the family cottage again: just her and the mosquitoes, and the gift she must supress until the next midnight outing with Father. He's on the road again, looking for another dusty tome. Mother's in the Chantry, keeping suspicion low – "The first sign of harbouring a mage is letting everybody know you're afraid to leave them alone in the house. Please don't give me a reason to be afraid, darling." _

_Bethany smiles at this: mother never uses the word 'apostate,' and frowns at Father whenever he uses it like a badge of honour to be worn on the breast for all to see. She'll never forget Mother's words – "Apostate? You never deserted the Maker. You never deserted anyone, Bethy. You're as He made you."_

_She leans out of the window at first, hearing the tuneful Chant over the breeze as black silky ribbons of hair flutter over her eyes and are plastered across her face. She brushes them away with an irked sigh. With her view clear, she watches Bradon and Carver duel in the nearest barley field with long, blunted wooden swords, giggling at their complete lack of restraint. Before long, Carver misses a parry and Bradon's weapon slams into his knee. Carver's sword disappears into the thin towers of yellow and he hops around absurdly, both hands over what will no doubt be a thick red welt within the next few minutes. She can't hear the resulting argument; they're too far away. Perhaps when Bradon's stopped gloating and Carver's calmed down, she can try another healing spell. Granted, human knees are a little more complex than Farmer Garoth's injured chicken's wing, but why not embrace the challenge? _

_It'll be nice to have a pleasant surprise prepared for Father. _

And then she was awake in the sickly-smelling dark. Here was the final lesson, the one he'd spent all this time preparing her for. It taken so much to make her realise: but Malcolm Hawke had been preparing her for the day she could look upon the Highroad and realise he would never return to compliment or critique her spells, but that she would try harder nonetheless. He had been preparing her for the day a loved one would be taken from her, beyond the grasp of the most well-cast healing spell, but that she would accept the inevitability of death, and treasure the time spent with that person, not blaming herself or the limitations of healing magic, or any other kind for the tragedy.

_That which is best in me, __not that which is most base. _

_Love, not magic, was that which was best in her. And her greatest strength could only be her acceptance of weakness._

"I'll make you proud Father," she whispered.

**~o~0~o~**

After the brief scare earlier – and of course, everything else he'd endured that day, Bradon was surprised to find himself immersed in such conventional dreams (or as close as any man can feel to surprise while unconscious). His mind surrendered to the usual tantalising fantasy; the glory of a great warrior. This one involved some blurry-edged vision of himself stood atop an unnamed mountain with the beauty of the world laid before him; pools of clear blue and the lively burst of a gushing waterfall beneath and luminous clouds impregnated with sunlight drifting contentedly above. His body felt strong and toned. Fresh, untarnished air filled his lungs and a cooling breeze massaged his face, which now bore a beard twice the thickness and length it once was. Even his heartbeat had an assertive strength; muscle and vein pumped against feather-light white steel mail and volcanic plates immaculately-curved to fit him. His hand grasped a dwarven-made dragonbone greatsword lined with gems, runes and the blood of an unseen, vanquished foe.

"I'd be dreaming of this too."

He spun around. The sword fell from his hand, over the edge and out of sight. Carver's white, smiling lips were still sashed with that crawling red snake of blood.

"You may achieve this one day. This is the first I've been a part of these visions, isn't it? You never saw us in this together. You never considered me strong enough."

The creaking began again, louder than the gushing water and howling wind. "Do you feel better knowing I'm out the way? Mother and Father's little prodigy, Occie's proud master, Bethany's idol."

"_Carver," _Bradon choked, unable to look into the other man's eyes, which were truly dead yet somehow still malevolent. The mail and plate became excruciatingly heavy, pulling him down like a prisoner's chains.

He awoke beneath a coating of cold sweat, quivering despite the stuffy humidity. "You never thought you were worthy of me or Father, did you Carver?" he breathed. "And only because I never told you that I knew you _were." _

**~o~0~o~**

Leandra's sleep was deeper than it had ever been; untouched by dream or vision. This was no accident, but a product of an iron-clad will. She would not be ashamed of her grief for a moment, but she would also not permit it to control her every thought and deed. It would not invade her sleep or poison her dreams. She had been the wife of Malcolm Hawke. She was the mother of two children who would surely live up to his name. She would rest her mind and her body properly, enabling her to help Aveline through the early days of widowhood, and her children through the shock of Carver's departure. Leandra's sleep was that of a determined wife, mother and friend. The darkspawn horde was already a thing of the past, but Kirkwall would be a different struggle, riches or no riches.

Leandra had left Kirkwall a pregnant, giddy Amell. She would return a proud Hawke, and defend her Malcolm's children to the death.


End file.
